An interview with Lucie Faulerová The “unreliable narrator” is something you wrote about for your thesis and it often comes up in connection with your writing – does that annoy you now? Is it still your favourite ‘figure’, approach or method in narration?

It does annoy me! However, it is still a way of narrating which I enjoy, and it is stimulating if it’s done in a new, practical and interesting way.
 
The novels Lapači prachu (Dust Catchers) amd Smrtholka (Deathmaiden) brought you to the attention of readers as well as the media – the first book was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award as well as the Jiří Orten Award, while the second received the European Union Prize for Literature. Was it difficult to meet the expectation of “only a successful second work guarantees the quality of an author”?

It wasn’t because I wasn’t aware of any such expectation while I was writing – I never placed this upon myself and I only acknowledged it from the outside once I had finished writing it.
 
Are you working on a third novel or are you taking some time out? How do you proceed when working on the plot, the motives, developing the characters – do you think about the next novel a great deal in advance or are you one of those authors who prefers to sit down and write – and it somehow evolves?

At the moment I’m working on a screenplay with my husband, the director Martin Krejčí. I have all sorts of ideas in my head regarding a future novel, but I’m just letting them circulate, becoming aware of them, and I’ll wait and see if they’ll take me somewhere. I think that I use the two methods you mentioned. I’ll think for a long time and at the same time I’ll sit and write without exactly knowing what, and then I just follow what happens.
 
You are a recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature, which is a literary prize that has been awarded since 2009. The 28 states of the EU take part in it as well as candidate countries and potential candidate countries and 3 countries from the EEA. What did this award bring to you personally and which translations did it support?

I was particularly pleased that it raised the profile of the book both in the Czech Republic – there is now a second edition on sale – and abroad. At the moment I know they are preparing translations in Spanish, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Italian, Serbian, Hungarian, Polish and Croatian.
 
You are obviously fascinated by the theme of suicide and death in general. Is there an element of terror in this fascination which gives it power and strength? On the other hand, you yourself have objected to this and see the central theme of Smrtholka as being freedom rather than death.

I think that there is an element of terror in all the things which attract me, and that this is an essential part of the fascination. I didn’t object to the fact that Smrtholka was about death. However, it seemed to me to be an oversimplification to see death as the main theme of the book just because it is explicitly mentioned and it gives the impression of a certain controversy. In short, I was thinking about death and suicide in various contexts and from various points of view. They are not themes which have nothing behind them. Behind them I saw the issue of freedom, the absurdity of life and the attempt to find some kind of meaning, the issue of free will and so on.
 
Your second novel which we are talking about, the award-winning Smrtholka, is distinctively rhythmic, and this rhythm and sound world which permeate the atmosphere of the train journey are also accentuated by the book’s graphics. Are the methods of poetry something you feel comfortable with even though your artistic and theoretical tools are more based in classical narration?

I would say that I have a poetic way of thinking. Sometimes I see lyrical images and I enjoy searching for ways to capture them and express them in prose.
 
What is your personal way of dealing with family tragedies and inherited troubles and grievances, or the unresolved tensions and recurring domestic dramas which you examine in your writing?

The best thing for me has probably just been to live with things, not hide them away, but continue forwards. And the most important thing for me is not to harbour feelings of being wronged and let them devour you.
 
You spent most of the covid period in California – what did the time spent there bring to your writing?

I don’t know yet. All I know is what it has brought into my life – which is a lot.
 
Do you agree with two prominent Czech literary critics that Czech female novelists pride themselves on their strange heroines?

I don’t know. I don’t have the same overview of contemporary Czech female novelists as our leading critics. Maybe they’re right. For me it’s a question of how you would define strange.

Are you inspired by contemporary Czech authors or do you take your inspiration from other artistic or literary forms?

I think that I find sources of inspiration everywhere – certainly not just from art and literature.
 
Is the study of literary theory more limiting or stimulating for the writer – does it interfere with creative work or does it support it?

That probably depends on the individual. It might impede one person and then help someone else. I took from it what was suitable for my work as well as for the interpretation of other works, and maybe even of the world in general…and then I decided to leave it.
 
You are part of the CELA international project, which aims to develop the skills of emerging writers and connect them across Europe. The second year of the project features 30 emerging writers, 79 translators and 6 literary professionals from 10 different European countries. As part of the project you were commissioned to write a short story. What was that experience like?

Wonderful. It’s always a challenge for me to write something on a given topic in such a way that I don’t let my hands get tied by the theme. I think that it worked out well. In addition, at the start I decided to link two subjects without having a clue as to how I’d finally connect them and whether it would work out. At the end it confirmed to me that sometimes it pays to trust your intuition.

An interview with Sára Vybíralová and Guillaume BassetIt’s not just local events which have been cancelled in connection with measures taken to limit the spread of coronavirus in Europe, but also major book fairs and festivals, including the one in Paris. The Czech Republic was supposed to be taking part in it for the first time in twelve years. What was planned, what does/did this mean for Czech involvement and what knock-on effect will the cancellation of the book fair have?

SV: Yes, along with other book fairs, the Czech Republic was supposed to be taking part in the Paris fair this year for the first time in years. We were only supposed to have a small stand, but we had lined up a packed programme: Guillaume Basset, who was in charge of the Czech Republic’s programme, had managed to arrange for several Czech authors who have recently had a book brought out in French to be included in discussions on the official book-fair stages. As well as the six authors involved in the main programme, we had also planned to introduce the French audience to several authors who have not yet been translated into French but who have the potential to appeal for various reasons; on top of that, there was going to be a discussion on the work of Milan Kundera with the participation of the Minister of Culture (to coincide with a newly published bibliography of Kundera’s work in translation) as well as a debate by Czech authors who write in French. The stand – where a collaboration with a local bookshop was to allow visitors to purchase books by Czech authors in French – was to be the venue for two book launches of new releases in French translation: the comic book The Dragon Never Sleeps and Josef Pánek’s novel Love in the Time of Global Climate Change.

Of course, all of this had been closely coordinated with the Czech Centre in Paris, which was also to host the accompanying programme focusing on themes such as the tradition of Czech book design and poetry in translation. As you might expect, a large number of people were involved in the preparations, whether as participants or as organizers, hosts, interpreters or volunteers. I can’t speak for all of them, but I think most of us are hoping that the Ministry of Culture will express an interest in participating in the Paris fair next year too, which will make it possible to proceed on the basis of what had been prepared for this year.

GB: We worked in close collaboration with programme planners from Paris to ensure higher attendance than is usual for Czech authors (Grus and Bellová were supposed to be taking part in panel discussions on the main stages, and the discussion about Milan Kundera was chosen as un temps fort, i.e. one of the main items given special prominence in the programme. We were one of the most active countries in terms of the festival programme, right after the guest of honour. We also tried to mobilize our contacts to enable the Czech Republic to become guest of honour at the 2022 Paris fair. The first step towards this achievement needs to be a higher number of translations and the presentation of Czech literature in France.

(The original Czech programme planned for Paris can be viewed HERE.)

That aside, how are the Czech Literary Centre and the organizers of the accompanying programmes for literary events in France going to postpone events or alter their line-up? What have you got planned?

SV: The epidemiological situation in Europe and the preventative measures have evolved very dynamically, so when the cancellation of the fair was announced (2nd March), we still thought we would at least be able to organize a pared-back replacement programme. A number of authors had bought non-refundable tickets for their flight or overland journey and were willing to come. The core was to be the accompanying programme at the Czech Centre, which would be supplemented with several events involving authors who were originally supposed to appear at the actual book fair. The whole of this programme was consolidated by the Czech Centre into a mini festival called The Czech Book, which was to see a pop-up bookshop springing up on the Czech Centre premises (with the books that had been prepared for the stand). However, on the evening of 10th March the Ministry of Culture, in accordance with a National Security Council ordinance, abolished all foreign travel and events abroad, and in the days that followed it became apparent that the plan for a replacement programme was actually wishful thinking.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the Czech Literary Centre has abandoned its agenda in France – there were other events in the pipeline which we will attempt to preserve. The Czech Centre in Paris is at least starting up a virtual literary programme based largely on what was in store for the book fair.

GB: Despite the cancellation of book fairs and the accompanying programmes linked with them, our previous efforts were fruitful and effective. We will be having further discussions about the opportunities they have opened up for Czech literature in France as soon as circumstances becomes more favourable.

What kind of timescale now seems realistic given the current situation?

SV: I think that’s a mystery to everyone; nevertheless, we hope that it will be possible to hold events in the autumn and possibly even in the summer. For June we had arranged to collaborate with the international festival in Lyon – we were supposed to lend support to the participation of Vojtěch Mašek – and for the time being the festival has not been cancelled and who knows, it might still go ahead. But these are hopes rather than plans, and until the situation gets back to normal, it’s impossible to take any significant steps without the consent of the Moravian Library and the Czech Ministry of Culture.

says Jiří Kratochvil in this exclusive interview for the English section of CzechLit.Which of your works do you like most and why?
I consider Medvědí román to be the most important, though I actually prefer Brněnské povídky. All the essentials were revealed to me in Medvědí román, my way of writing, i.e. the status of the narrator, who is also actually one of the characters, so he can enter the narrative, as well as the narrative game and the awareness that narrative for me is not just a depiction of reality, but a reflection of reality through stories. I like Brněnské povídky most, because short stories are my favourite genre even as a reader: Bunin, Babel, Borges, and here Vyskočil, Hrabal and the like. Of Kundera’s work I most like Směšné lásky and Knihu smíchu a zapomnění, which are also stories actually. As an author I like short stories most of all, because I feel I’m more of a sprinter than a marathon runner, and I only write novels when I find a particular plot simply doesn’t fit into a short story.

What are you working on at present?
On the journalistic flea market (essays, feuilletons and so forth) and a second book of Brno tales.

What would you like to write and publish next?
Apart from the journalistic work and the second book of Brno tales there is another novel, whose subject and plot I do already know.

Which work do you regard as your most successful with regard to criticism, literary awards, readers’ responses, number of copies sold and number of translations, or responses from abroad?
The novel Uprostřed nocí zpěv, published by Gallimard and Rowohlt, two of the most prestigious European publishers.

Where do you think your works are best understood?
In the German-speaking world and surprisingly in Spain.

How do you write – easily, quickly, by hand, on the computer?
I write slowly – first version by hand and the second one on the computer.

How and why did you become a writer?
Narro, ergo sum. Even as a boy I used to be a popular story-teller, and I enjoy turning reality into fantasy.

Your stories sometimes have a dream-like quality. Do dreams play a role in your narrative art? Do they ever inspire you?
I’d say they do, and it’s happened several times now that a story I didn’t have a clue what to do with, a story that had got stuck, was “written out to the end” in a dream.

How would you feel if you ever found one of your stories in a science-fiction anthology? Are you interested in science fiction and fantasy here and abroad?
I’d be very pleased. I’m a keen sci-fi reader, but only the classics, like Bradbury, Clarke and Asimov.

Linguistically your stories often have a distinctive Brno touch to them. Do you actually think in Brno “Hantec” dialect?
No, I don’t think in Hantec. Nowadays that’s just artificial folklore, though it was still alive when I was a boy. It no longer interests me, apart from just a few words that have slipped into my literary vocabulary for good, just like a few Slovak words have, for example.

How do you feel when you are in Prague? Are you able to write when you are there?
I can’t write anything in or about Prague.

What do you say to those who feel there is some “escapism” in your stories?
Well, I actually feel my short stories and novels are condensed from reality, as it were. I went through a dozen different trades in the days when I was a forbidden author, and when I say trades I mean labouring at plants of all kinds, and after my father emigrated I experienced all kinds of interesting traumas (that is, they strike me as interesting now from the literary viewpoint), so quite unwillingly I have lived an adventurous life, which I make copious use of in my stories.

Interviewed by Melvyn Clarke

says writer Jana Šrámková, who works at the Literary Academy and co-authored Twelve Paragraphs on Prose.

Together with Jan Němec and Ivan Myšková you have written the text of Twelve Paragraphs on Prose, which was published by Respekt magazine before Christmas. Why was it written and why wasn‘t it published by some literary platform?
Just before it was written, there were several reasons we felt a need to call for a discussion. Apart from the more persistent problem areas that we refer to directly in the text, the chief catalyst was a debate at the Academy of Sciences Institute of Czech Literature:  Czech literature 2013: initial inventory. We began to analyse the points that had been raised there and the approach of the panelists, and as we didn’t want to leave it as just pub chat, which in this day and age means a few Facebook threads, we decided to express ourselves publicly and to instigate a broader discussion, which has long been lacking with regard to prose. We don’t have the feeling that what we deal with in the twelve paragraphs in any way affects the three of us more than others, and we do not at all feel personally harmed by the literary milieu. That is just stupid. But the literary scene is an element we move in naturally at many levels. We write in it, and we read and work in it, so when something about it looks wrong over the long term, we consider it natural to comment on it. This is a simple “public-spirited” position. So we published the Paragraphs in Respekt so that as many people as possible could respond to them. After all, it is more widely read and more easily available throughout the country than any literary periodical. Besides, it was in the literary supplement.

What were the responses to the text? Kamil Boušek‘s polemics have just come out in Tvar.
There were plenty of responses, but they can’t all be typified, as there is an amazing range of them, from those which consider the Paragraphs to be so obvious and self-evident that there was no point in writing them, through to those which see the text as bold and very controversial. Some welcome it as a stimulus for discussion, others read it as an elitist proclamation, and others still as chip-on-shoulder whining. I think that all in all this testifies to the need for a debate of this kind, because we have no idea who considers what to be standard or scandalous. While the poets passionately discuss among themselves, the prose writers do not reflect too much over each other, they do not create a community and they have no heated debates over texts. The poets take their work far more personally. They understand their views on literature to be an integral part of their poetics. They have this intensive search, which I feel is lacking in prose. The first full coherent text in response came to us, typically, from a poet, Kamil Bouška. I am going to write a response to him, so just in outline here: it is an enthusiastic personal text, a testimony from a quite different genre and project. The Paragraphs do not deal with the innermost being of our work, or with specific poetics at all, so it is not an actual manifesto. It is more an operational situational text. Kamil has misconstrued us on the point of topicality and we do not agree on the poet‘s evaluation.

You have mentioned several times that you were responding to a discussion at the Academy of Sciences Institute of Czech Literature. What disappointed you about it?
Above all the previously published points on prose work, which were unbelievably slipshod. And the panelists did not look like they had much of an idea what could be said about them. It is characteristic of a particular stream of thinking on Czech prose writing, which is accompanied by a constant chip on the shoulder. It was quite a big event, the hall was bursting at the seams, it was being recorded by Vltava radio, and an extract from the debate was published by Host. And instead of these points producing something, the text by Josef Chuchma was written really badly, it was unspecific and superficial and basically universally applicable for any year you care to name. Why does it just broadly slide over the surface like that? Why do people who deal professionally with literature not keep to the basic rules of interpretation? In some ways it reminded me of the essay The Spider Woman and the Poor Fat Fly by Jiří Peňás on women‘s literature, which brought a breath of fresh air to the cultural section a year ago, but instead of this doubtless much needed debate on “women‘s writing” could lead anywhere constructuve, it foundered over the fact that the essay was so badly argued that it contradicted itself and generalized awfully. You could not respond other than by catching out some problem in every paragraph and so condemning it as irrelevant. Although it is average literature, what on earth gives them the right to write such below-average texts about it?

Do you see the same specific features recurring in literature written by women? In what way does women‘s literature enhance the current literary scene?
How can women’s literature enhance the current literary scene? Does that mean there is some normal contemporary literature and beside that there is women’s literature? They are not two differing traditions. To generalize to some extent, you can talk about two different approaches or tendencies, but this generalization is so extreme that it practically loses all meaning. The term “women’s writing” bothers me not because of some touchiness over gender, which I cannot stand, but because nobody knows what it actually means. Take any representative quantity of texts. Compare their topics, composition and motifs. Do a linguistic analysis, and then try to define what is specific about women’s writing. Then it has some sense. But normally this term is just used in slapdash reviewing as an easy label that doesn’t actually mean anything. Only if we succeed in precisely identifying some specific poetics typical of the great majority of women should we call that women’s writing. I just don’t know if that is practical, because it might then happen that a man will meet the criteria of women’s writing with his poetics, while lots of women will miss out. Of course, I don’t deny there is “something” that women tend towards more as they write, but it is awfully difficult to grasp. If Tučková is a “woman author” in her poetics, then in all probability so is Hájíček. If Myšková is a woman author then Soukupová cannot be, and vice versa.

You have already referred to the way prose is reflected critically. How does this differ from poetry criticism?
Reviews are often an open denial of the fact that prose is also a struggle for expression. We have somehow learnt to see it as a popular medium, so it is mainly the plot that is dealt with and whether or not the work is autobiographical, that crops up too in interviews. But what I feel is missing is the search for what makes any given text a literary text. How does the way the book is constructed contribute to the meaning? Does it carry any meaning? Does it copy the subject? Is it a pleasure to read a particular book even if I know how it ends, or if I have already read a spoiler is it just a needless chore to read on? Anyone can dare to do an interview with a prose writer or review a prose work, because commenting on a novel is not that much of an art – after all, every blogger does it, whereas, nobody can manage to review a poetry collection. No “normal“ person reads it or has any idea how to write about it. So we leave this work to those few people who are “able” to do it. As a result, poetry reviews are better and more interesting, when they actually get to be written. Even in Respect, where reviews are generally of a high standard, even though they are not too literary, it will always be Jan Štolba who writes about a poetry collection.

You and your colleagues took quite a strong stance in the Paragraphs in relation to genre literature. Isn‘t classic narrative just one way of conceiving the world and narrative? Is it at all possible to compare this kind of writing with more literary texts?
I think this was really formulated in an unfortunate way. We did not want to set ourselves up against genre literature in general. Besides, the statement that some of these Scandinavian crime thrillers are written in a masterly way was no irony. But that paragraph is aimed at something else. We have long stopped distinguishing between what is highbrow and what is trivial literature. You can’t even really do that because they very much permeate and enhance each other. But then we read and reflect on everything as if it were one stream, which is also not possible. The demands that were once placed on genre literature alone are now being automatically placed on more highbrow literature too. For example, are we to rebuke purely reflexive prose because it doesn’t read like Nesbø? Or that you can’t very easily make head or tail of Ajvaz’s novels? It would be enough when you are reading to submit more to the text, to try in advance to anticipate the fact that some of the peculiarities and reader’s difficulties, or then again the apparent banalities, might be intentional, and that all the elements in the text actually lead somewhere and create something – not to read with the idea that this is Czech prose, we can’t handle this.

Reflections on literature often repeat those assumed problems that Czech literature is supposed to suffer from, but the texts that deal with them are often unanchored and insecure in the terms they use.
Yes, this terminology is unclear. In the Twelve Paragraphs we took issue with the demand for the large novel, as we understand it. Then there was a radio interview in  Názory a argumenty on culture in 2013 and the invited guests, Peňás and Chuchma, mentioned our text when they said that the large novel still exists of course, as does the great epic, see Rybí krev. It turned out that by large novel they meant an extensive epic text on a subject that has not previously been dealt with. Well sure, of course the large novel has a rosy and indeed a commercially quite interesting future ahead of it, but by saying that I do not wish to detract from the fact that it is seriously necessary to anchor these undefined, clichéd terms. Otherwise there is no point in using them.

If the Paragraphs helped just to clarify the term “large novel“, i.e. that criticism is actually calling for a certain number of pages, then all well and good.

I get the impression from what you say that a certain amount of ignorance and a latent lack of interest on the part of the specialists poses a certain problem. But who is to provide a credible picture of literature if not them?
I see we are asking the same questions.

Interviewed by Zuzana Kůrová

says Marcin Skrabka, Director of Czeskie Klimaty, which publishes and promotes Czech literature in Poland.This summer you published a work by Martin Šmaus in translation: Děvčátko, rozdělej ohníček (Make a Little Fire, Lass) and you invited the author to the recent Good Book Fair in Wroclaw. What were your impressions?
He’s a very likable person. He has an interesting, philosophical view of the world. He’s analytical and maintains a certain detachment, but he has put his entire heart into his book, which is full of emotion.

Šmaus has been translated into Polish by Dorota Dobrew. Are you going to carry on working together with her?
She is translating a book Zatím dobrý (Good So Far) by Jan Novák, which comes out next autumn. It is faction, which the Poles will like a lot.

How do you decide which Czech books to publish in Polish?
We have a look around ourselves. Sometimes we are given tips by the translators, who have a nose for what might catch on. Czech literary agents Dana Blatná and Edgar de Bruin send us lots of offers. But not everything that they recommend can be translated and published. First we have to know that the title will sell in Poland. Not every title that does well in the Czech Republic is going to be successful here. We mostly choose books on the basis of whether they have something the Poles will be familiar with, or whether they are too Czech, e.g. like Hrabal’s works.

How are our current authors doing in your country?
The great majority of them are entirely unknown. When we decide to publish one of their books, we have to do a lot to promote it and present it to the Poles on a plate, right under their noses. We managed to do this with Jarka Rudiš, who is very communicative, which the Poles respond to. He was born near the Polish border, in Lomnice nad Popelkou, he understands Polish and has written about Poland.

After some rather disappointing experiences, in future we would only like to publish one contemporary Czech author a year. For example, we have designs on Jiří Hájíček and Martin Ryšavý. But we are placing our hopes of commercial success more in previously untranslated works by Čapek, Škvorecký and other well-established authors.

Czech female writers in particular sell badly in Poland. The Poles don’t like women who write. At best female authors who write similar books to those of Halina Pawlowská sell well, but we would like to publish more “highbrow” literature. As yet we have not found a Czech Olga Tokarczukova. If there is one then she ought to give us a call!

What about Kateřina Tučková?
Katka might catch on here. She visited Wroclaw as part of the summer international Month of Authors’ Readings, and she said that for Žítkovské bohyně she was using information from a special witchcraft archive in Poznan. I think that would work well in this country. Another Wroclaw publishing house is already working on the translation.

The reportage school is popular in Poland. Do you not find anything similar in the Czech Republic?
Something of that kind is missing from the Czech Republic, though Žítkovské bohyně comes close. We want to publish Karel Čapek’s conversations with T. G. Masaryk. We have also been impressed by Slečna Barbora Baronová and Dita Pepe.

Which Czech writer is most successful in Poland?
Miroslav Žamboch! Not a lot of people know that.  Fabryka Słów publishers have brought out about twenty of his books in Polish. At the Polcon meeting for sci-fi and fantasy fans, where we were selling his books, there was a queue of about 150 people. We had to wait an hour and a half for all the books to get signed and then we had to close the stall down because they were all sold out.

Apart from Czeskie Klimaty you also run Slowackie and Grecke Klimaty. Which of these three is the workhorse?
Czeskie Klimaty for sure. This is logical because we share a similar language, we have the longest border with the Czech Republic and Wroclaw, where we are based, is in Silesia, where we can hear your radio and television stations. We are close to each other.

How is Slowackie Klimaty doing?
The problem with Slovakia is that it does not have the kind of symbols that you have. They don’t have their Hrabal, Škvorecký, Havel or Kundera. And by the way, some Poles think the Tatras are in the Czech Republic… It’s a pity because there are several very interesting writers in Slovakia, e.g. Pavol Rankov – his Stalo se prvního září (It Happened on September 1st) is our most popular Slovak title. And then there is Petr Krištůfek, Pavel Vilikovský and others.

And Grecke Klimaty?
That is more of an experiment. As far as Greece is concerned, the Poles think of mythology, holidays and the crisis. But we do also know of several interesting authors that we would like to present to Polish readers.

Are you planning to expand further into other national spheres?
We would like to establish a Hungarian Klimaty. Historically, we are closer to the Hungarians than to the Czechs. Ever since the Middle Ages we have had a saying: Poles and Magyars are brothers both with the sabre and the glass. This expresses the historical friendship between both nations. But so far we haven’t figured out what characterizes them for the Poles and what kind of logo they should have. Inclusion of the Hungarian brand is logical if we receive long-term aid from the Visegrad Fund.

Can you speak Czech well? How long have you been learning?
For about a year and a half, though I can only handle standard Czech and I don’t have the right accent. My teacher told me that I learn most from Nohavica, But a and other bands. I don’t think Czech is difficult for Poles or vice versa. And some Poles read your books in the original. We sell a few of them.

How did you get into the Czech language?
My grandfather was one of those Poles who used to live before the war in what is now Byelarus. After the war they were sent to an area that had previously been part of Germany, so he made his way to Zittau on the Polish-German-Czech border. I used to visit him every holiday and that is where I first heard Czech, amongst other things thanks to the children’s programme Večerníček.

And how did you get into Czech literature and its publication?
After finishing college I worked at a large legal publishers in Warsaw and from time to time I used to visit Liberec for a bit of skiing and then the swimming pool and fried cheese. So I popped into this bookshop and was immediately taken by the Czech books there. So then a friend and I set up a publishers and based it very much on national brands – each nation has its favourites and in the case of the Poles there are the Czechs and the Slovaks. Hence Czeskie a Slowackie Klimaty.

How many of you are there in your company?
Three people make up the core and we have other co-workers for the markets or special events. We have found they work well, they sell books successfully and they enjoy the work. We have one Czech, Markéta Pěluchová, on an attachment. Markéta helps us out a lot on the project for training Polish book discussion clubs, which we are putting a lot of effort into at the moment. The clubs are run by the Polish libraries. Every month we head out somewhere and speak with the moderators about Czech or Slovak books. Direct contact with readers and library staff is very satisfying but demanding. We have now lectured to two hundred people and I think next year there will be thousands of them.

What do you have of interest for us in future?
We would like to get into tourism and perhaps publish a book on folk music. The former is necessarily associated with a particular location, so a subject that combines tourism and culture strikes me as appropriate. Next year we would like to have a Czech or Slovak band at the markets in Wroclaw station. I see great potential in various arts providing support for each other. It would be fantastic if Nohavica, for example, played for us at the Warsaw stadium where the biggest Polish book fair takes place.

Interviewed by Jaroslav Balvín

About the publisher

Marcin Skrabka was born in 1978. He studied law and now runs Czeskie, Slowackie a Grecke Klimaty. He also offers a course for future editors and media workers at the Wroclaw University Faculty of Arts.

says writer Tereza Boučková, who has brought out her latest book Šíleně smutné povídky (Madly Sad Stories). You said somewhere that the success of Rok kohout (Year of the Rooster) had paralysed you. How long did it take for another book to mature within you and for you to be ready to write?
A couple of years. But I don’t think I wasted them. I went round the country giving readings and attending forums. When I wasn’t on the road I took advantage of the peace and quiet at home. Home without the rifling through pockets and yelling, where you aren’t constantly being cheated and disappointed and a police car isn’t outside the door every week – I never had that a couple of years ago. But then came the irritability and the urge, the need to create – but at the same time the fear that I don’t know what and how to write and if there is any point to it at all, and why try for anything else…? I go through this repeatedly and it was no different this time. But perhaps I have to work through everything. Even for the right time to write.

In what way was writing short stories new for you?
For the first time in my life I really invented stories, which is tremendously liberating. You just have to look more into the psychology of the characters and the truth of the situation that you have thought up for them. Rok kohouta threw me back into depression and a feeling of futility. Of course, I didn’t feel this as I was writing the stories, but then again I had to imagine myself in situations that I have never actually known and that really exhausted me emotionally. Přes most (Across the Bridge) was the most difficult. I had to imagine the feelings of characters whose son had killed himself and I was terribly afraid I might bring something like that about in my own life. Then I had to intricately pull myself round from that stream of emotions.

It is clear from your narrative that in a way writing saps you. Have you ever considered stopping?
I keep stopping. And then I start again…

Your stories are about things that people fear and that keep happening again and again over the millennia. Why have you chosen such “known” losses as your subject?
I tried to give each story its own unmistakablesingle main subject, which interested me. And I also tried to write them so as to interest the readers and draw them in. I certainly thought a lot of things up, as I said, but like everybody who lives in a long-term relationship, I know how difficult it is not to get burned out. And I also know what it’s like to lose friends quite needlessly. And I have also experienced a mad urge to have a child – even if it was under different circumstances. I was fascinated to write these simple, ever-recurring stories in a way that sounded new, unique and moving.

In your latest book you remain mostly hidden. This is a change from Rok kohouta, which was very personal. After reading it, people often had the impression they had got to know you well. After that did you not think that you had gone too far with the honesty?
Yes, a lot of people wrote to me who had the feeling they knew me. And that I had described their lives, even if they had never adopted any children. A lot of people also wrote who had similar families and who had lived through the same thing. They were glad they no longer had to explain the unexplainable.

Only I know what and how it really was and only I myself can decide what and how to write it. That is the author’s right. The reader has to believe him. If he doesn’t believe then he wrote something bad. It will be seen in fifty years if Rok kohouta is also of literary quality and its success is not just based on the topical, previously taboo subject of adoption and the Roma. I put a lot of work into making sure my novel crescendoed. I put that strength into it. I considered the extent of honesty very carefully. But then ultimately it became evident that if you are as honest as possible with yourself then you can let yourself be honest with others too.

Did it occur to you before you started writing Rok kohouta that somebody might interpret it as proof that Roma are ineducable?
People can always misinterpret you and give you big problems. Fortunately or unfortunately, this had happened to me before I started to write Rok kohouta, in a Respekt article by Jáchym Topol – Prokletí nechtěných dětí – The Curse of Unwanted Children. Paradoxically this only strengthened me later in my resolve to write my story. Let readers consider just how they would have borne up in my situation.

The writer Rudolf Sloboda is often mentioned in Rok kohouta. In what way is he close to you?
The way he wrote in a killingly honest way. I really liked his novel Rozum (Reason). It really spoke for me. I read it at the right time and I was in tune with it. I also really liked Rubato, which I translated into Czech, even though I think that Slovak should be read in the original. And Uršula a Láska.

I read through your blog at Aktuálně.cz and the readers’ comments. People were calling you all sorts of names.
Internet discussions are to a large extent the product of hung-up idiots who can only call you names. And they don’t even have the courage to sign their names. Our nation has always had a handful of heroes and a horde of people who called names and insults and didn’t  do a thing themselves. Heroism, like cowardice, is a genetic predisposition. Nothing to be done about it. I dealt with it by writing my opinion to those abusers. As always I signed my name and then stopped dealing with them in my blogs. I do not need that adrenalin in my life.

You are one of the few authors who lived through the revolution and who reflect the old regime very strictly in their work. Is it just my impression or is recent history really being rubbed out and removed?
The old regime is in me – it’s hard to clean it out of my writing. History has always been interpreted expediently and it will never be any different. And here unfortunately a thick line was drawn straight away in 1990 – by people I wouldn’t have have expected it from. So now it is coming back at us.

In this context we cannot forget your screenplay for the film Zemský ráj to napohled (An Earthly Paradise for the Eyes). This was highly acclaimed by some, while others complained that it blurs and disparages.
My screenplay is no dark drama. Even though the period following the occupation was awfully hopeless, it wasn’t a question of life or death. People were dreadfully humiliated and demoralized, but they still carried on living their lives full of affairs, infidelities, separations and embarrasssing parental failures. It was also a time of fine friendships, lots of adventures and laughter. We really had a great laugh even though we were desperate. What I liked about the plot of my film was the brave ones who weren’t afraid to stand up to the regime, but they could be – and often were – quite cowardly in their personal and family life. A fine balance between the large and the small.

How do you see the current social atmosphere? People are frustrated and “nostalgic optimism” is cropping up. They are looking for those to blame for the present state.
I’m afraid people are people and they aren’t going to be anything else. Where do you find an elite in politics, for example, when they are so scarce overall? And when the nation votes, who are they voting for? I would be very glad to be proud of the representatives of this state. But I’m not. When I am really fed up then I think back to the times that people are so nostalgic for and I am glad it is behind us. We live in freedom and everybody can show what they are capable of. Nobody is preventing you from studying and developing your talent, travelling or even using abusive language. It’s freedom and it’s marvellous.

Interviewed by Zuzana Kůrová

says poet Jakub Řehák, whose second collection Past na Brigitu (Trap for Brigita) won the Magnesia Litera award this year. Does Prague still enchant you that much?
I’m fascinated by Prague. Perhaps like anybody who wasn’t born here. I’m reminded of something that Meyring said, that the breath of the dead can immediately be sensed in Prague. And there is something to that. Prague is this weird, slightly putrescent being.

Where are you from?
Moravia.

Is Prague a woman?
I don’t know if it is, actually. More of an octopus, I think. You can’t live in Prague and perhaps you can’t entirely live without Prague. I came to realize this again just recently. I was out of the country for some time and I started remembering my dreams quite vividly. Almost every one was to do with Prague or took place there. But then in Prague itself I don’t have any dreams, or I hardly remember any anyway, because in Prague you are forever moving in a half-doze, a constant waking dream. Prague is impressive, but I’d say that is in spite of its inhabitants. A more typical characteristic of Prague than the Castle is the dogs hit on the pavement. Drug addicts and homeless people collecting bottles from dustbins. Heroin substitute boxes thrown into corners beneath baroque churches. Baleful-eyed girls holding hands on hot summer streets… It is difficult not to be fascinated by this cocktail of chimeras. But then after a while it makes you feel a bit ill.

Have you noticed that the stars don’t shine at night in Prague?
It depends where you live. When I lived in Košíře and came out of the house at night for a smoke on the garage roof, I just had to raise my head and the whole galaxy was on display. Just like sparkling mica scattered in black asphalt. Whereas in Vršovice, where I live now, you see more of that orange bulb sky.

Which parts of Prague do you like best?
I do have some favourite places, but I’d rather keep them to myself. If I actually name them then it’s not really going to be any good.

Is there any room for poetry in today’s world?
That sounds like a provocation. It’s just like asking if there’s any room for human beings. It used to be common to have to always defend poetry. Poets – when anybody deigned to ask them – had to explain their deviation. Death, the end of poetry and silence. Every poet is in some way affected and accompanied by these. Perhaps because poetry mediates something very archaic and primitive, which is no longer a natural part of modern human awareness. I, myself, have had the physical feeling as I read poetry and sometimes after I write it, as if some force were passing through my body. So I find poetry to be something very fundamental, that has been here with us since the world began. It doesn’t need to seek a place. It takes one up naturally.

But the fact that this is not known much or that few people are aware of it is quite another matter. My favourite poet Leon Paul Fargue even says that when books die out, along with their readers, poets and critics – when the universe itself comes to an end, there will still be poetry and she will forgive the Absolute for having had to live for a time among scribblers and versifiers.

Where do you see yourself in Czech poetry?
A question on my position within Czech poetry is really one for the literary critics. I would like to get over the Czech context. Put my poetry on a level with my favourite poets regardless of country or time. Of course, I say that with some exaggeration.

And also a bit in earnest too… How would you describe modern Czech poetry?
I think it is still rather undefined, though I am speaking of younger poetry, not the older swells. There are several schools here that kind of ignore each other a little (I do too, nothing to be done about it). There are more imaginative, more traditional poets, meditative lyricists, authors who want to write simply and straightforwardly and try to write something like political poetry, and poets who swear on the language and who see poetry as a purely aesthetic and formal category. And of course there are lots of loners. But there is one problem here, that is, Czechia is not an entirely suitable environment for the natural development of various celebrity poets.

It seems to me – and I may be wrong – that an original poet is a person who has the strength not to give way to conventional trends in majority society. Except poets these days make compromises, they want to be “normal” and just escape into poetry now and then, so they are rarely distinctive and unique.

It’s hard to say who a poet is these days. A shaman, official, scholar, artist or tramp? That is always just the outer shell. I think a poet is somebody whose inner disposition doesn’t entirely conform to the times. And it doesn’t really matter which regime he lives under. He must have a very close feel for the language, consciously or otherwise. He makes sure of this by expanding his register, and uses it differently to most people, who write the language that has been imposed on them, thus limiting their reality, whereas the poet – and this is going to sound awfully ham-fisted and big-headed – expands that reality, mainly by finding verbal expression for its hidden forms. Apart from a sensitivity towards language, this also requires a certain mental disposition. It’s a membrane in the head, which lets in things that do not pass the threshold of awareness in many other people. Or they do in some people, but then they don’t have the actual language. You have to recognize it, come to terms with it and then look after it and not lack faith. I was speaking more of the literary usage that is predominant here.

How do you mean?
After a certain time lots of poets start conserving their style and stop developing it. One or two collections come out and their style is then often fixed. One reason is poor editing policy (with some exceptions, little, if any, editing work on collections), a lax approach in the large-scale media, if any – they don’t print poetry reviews in the dailies. And then not many people who write about poetry manage to express themselves in an informed manner without using academic jargon, which is the bane of a lot of texts. But I am not complaining, just stating a fact. Someone else might say that modern poetry is simply uninteresting and the authors themselves are to blame. But that is another discussion.

What do you mean by “conserving your poetic style”?
I’ve been reading a lot of John Ashbery. I’m fascinated by the way he quite consciously develops his style. He has expanded his poetic capacity. I find this is missing a little here in Czechia, as if some poets were afraid of evolving, as if it were dangerous to depart from the style you have found. When a publication is brought out, expectations are aroused. What will this one be like? And of course it is easier to keep doing the same thing and to meet those expectations. But I don’t think you should do that. You need to let that momentum pass and set out elsewhere. Even try something that you don’t like in other people’s poetry.

What do you think good poetry editing looks like?
It should definitely not just be proofreading, for example. Whoever is in charge of a collection at the publisher’s should see it as a whole, see its potential and manage to point out things that aren’t suitable. Importantly, the editor should not just be happy with what the author has put if front of him. He should have an overview, but he should also be able to sense where that book is heading, that is, sense what form it might ideally take. Petr Borkovec, for example, is very good at this kind of delicate direction.

Reviewers see you as a surrealist. Do you see yourself that way?
No, I don’t. But surrealism was important for me. I do keep coming back to it. The first two parts of Brigita were written at a time when I found myself reading a lot of Effenberger’s second volume and Breton’s poetry, translated by Petr Král. At the time I was also reading some of Zbyněk Havlíček’s early poetry. I wrote reviews and articles on all three of them. And I think that had an influence on some of the poems from Brigita. But I have never resisted that influence. Quite the contrary. What keeps me fascinated in surrealism is its stress on the fact that first something has to happen to you. You have to change your awareness for a poem to emerge. A poem that has the character of energy, which can have an influence even on this “ordinary” life. It’s happened to me several times that I have written a poem and in a sense it has materialized and become a part of my life.

For example?
In an old poem, Garden after Nightfall, a strange situation occurred: “a chap with an illuminated hand / knows / that girls pass there / from their shift / he lurks there/ strangles the girls / hangs them up on low tram wires / but only for a while / the girls resist and throw away their bags / when they run down the dark path / metal resounds in their neck / and the horror disappears”. About two months later somebody attacked my girlfriend at the time in a similar way. When Yellow Umbrella Opens a Chaotic Season was written, the poem seemed to literally lead me towards certain life situations, without which it would not have been what it was. Words basically have this power. But this only works sometimes. With a certain strong energy that you are not even aware of at the time. Banal as it is, that is what I find.

Speaking of energy, do you like reading your poems out loud?
I will occasionally read out a poem to myself when I am trying to finish it, to check if the rhythm works and sometimes I like to read to the public for similar reasons. Sometimes it happens – the text has an energy, it gives something and at the same time it takes something from the audience. But I do not enjoy the actual act of reading.

Do you like your own voice?
I’d say it this way: before each public reading I usually want to die or throw up in the nearest toilet. I hate myself for being such a narcissus or masochist that I agreed to a reading. But then it changes and I sometimes have the feeling that as I read, a poem acquires a tone that might hurt somebody. But what I want to stress is that like Šalda I think that poems should be read out loud in their entirety – they shouldn’t be divided into individual stanzas or words, but people should be enabled to experience that unity that each poem hides within itself. I don’t like theatrical presentations of poetry very much – the tradition of passionate, enthusiastic performances.

Interviewed by Kateřina Nechvílová

says British-based Czech writer Iva Pekárková, whose two latest works, Levhartice and the bilingual Zápisky z Londýna have just come out. Five years have passed since the publication of your last novel.
It took me a long time to write Levhartice. If I’d had the right conditions it might just have taken me two or three months. But I think that the longer period of time helped it to develop.Iva Pekárková

What makes the chief protagonist of Levhartice tick?
Milla has the feeling that she has been buried alive in Prague over the last few years. She takes off for a “cure” to Britain, where she seeks the anonymity that she didn’t have in Czechia, even though nobody actually noticed her here. But they had her categorized.

She is also dealing with the fact that Czech men don’t like her.
I have noticed that many, perhaps most, Czech women between the ages of 37 and 45 or 50 who no longer have or never had a model’s statistics feel totally, utterly crushed because they no longer interest the men and that they are now too old for them. My entire generation has been through this. And it’s not just a matter of years. A brunette found a husband when she was 18 or 20, and after some time he started to criticize her because she wasn’t a blonde. And if she was a blonde she would be taken to task why she wasn’t a brunette – and so on. Whatever a woman was like, her husband would begin to reproach her for not being something else, and yet he had married her. When “ladies of some age” go out into the world, they cannot believe their eyes: the men start to notice them! It is refreshing. And I’m not the first to say it: lots of women know of this.

Is this a purely Czech syndrome?
Possibly Eastern European and mostly generational.

Why is this?
The men don’t know what they want, and blame it on the women.

What do you think this reflects?
Their frustration? Dissatisfaction with life? But I hasten to add: naturally I am only talking about some men. Some women from my generation (and other generations) can be real harpies and henpeck their husbands in a way that’s quite unknown in most of the rest of the world. When you look around the world, you see that Bohemian and Moravian aren’t that awful: they don’t marry off their daughters when they’re twelve, they don’t bring several legal wives home and they beat their partners almost exclusively when they are drunk and not in order to “educate” them while they are sober. The fact is that many women from our geopolitical region have got the feeling that once they reach a certain age they become invisible – and all you need to do is go abroad to stop being transparent. That is what I am referring to in this book.

What place does Levhartice have within the context of your work?
I intend to write a “black and white animal trilogy”. The first part was Sloni v soumraku (Elephants in the Twilight) about an Englishwoman who is getting on in years and a young Senegalese. This is a story that has been entirely stolen from one of my taxi customers – the young Senegalese man actually. We went for a beer a couple of times, he told me about his life and marriage to this older English woman, and he wrote me a couple of e-mails. About a year later his wife hacked into his e-mail, found these messages and wrote me an awfully rude e-mail asking me why I was trying to seduce him. I answered in a sisterly way, but she answered with about eight more rude e-mails, in which over time she described her entire life. I just needed a bit of research and Sloni v soumraku was ready for publication. I wrote this book as a bit of a warning: today too many women are taking up with partners from Africa who are several decades younger than they are – and for the most part it doesn’t work out. Sure, several novels have come out with similar subject matter, but Sloni v soumraku is quite unique in that the story is written from both points of view: the naïve older white woman and the very unnaive young African. Each of them has their truth on their side.

How do you carry on charting black-white relations in the second part of your trilogy?
In contrast to Sloni v soumraku, Levhartice describes a working “black-white” relationship. I also wanted to describe the trend whereby lots of people scorn their own culture as they fall in love with a foreign one, often to an embarrassing extent. Milla isn’t entirely mad, but she has felt hurt by her culture. She seeks consolation in other cultures – and meets up with this black family, which is not at all ashamed of its African origins, but does not place any special importance on them. So a situation emerges in which Milla is enthusiastic about black culture – and the blacks with European culture. The way that situation develops is described in Levhartice.

What else do we have to look forward to?
The last part will be called Pečená zebra (Roast Zebra), which was inspired by my Nigerian friend Kenny, who always looks at the menu in Czech restaurants and enthusiastically declares: “I’ll have the roast zebra”. This book is to be about blacks in Bohemia. I don’t just know about them from Kenny, but I get consulted by lots of Czech girls who have fallen in love with blacks and have children with them and then don’t know what to do – as well as their mothers. I try to help and advice them where possible, but it isn’t always easy. In Pečená zebra I would like to describe a phenomenon that I have noticed: here there’s a whole caste of girls who have been disappointed in their relations with a Czech, and then instead of taking more care next time they fall head over heals for someone who looks, talks and acts “exotic”. Sometimes it works out, but too often it doesn’t”.

How do you write? By hand or do you rely on the computer?
I write serious things with my pen, because the speed of handwriting matches my train of thought. Hand contact is also important for me and I don’t want to lose the abililty to write anything anywhere, even with out wifi or electricity. I write too fast on a typewriter or computer and mostly things I am not that bothered with.

You wrote Levhartice in Budapest among other places as part of the Visegrad residential programme. Was this your first ever creative residence?

I’d already been on three residences thanks to the Germans. In 2002 with the assistance of the Robert Bosche Foundation I spent two months in Berlin in what was then the bohemian quarter of Kreuzberg. I was also at Wannsee near Potsdam and on the island of Sylt in the Baltic Sea.

What kind of literature are you influenced by? Do you read more in English or Czech?
I’m mostly influenced by life but of course I read a lot. Twenty years ago I was influenced by black American writer Toni Morrison. I’ve been reading in English since 1982 or 1983. I also read in Czech but it’s easier to find what you want in English.

What is the difference between literature written in English and in Czech?
Literature written in English is greater to the power of four. There are several styles in English where there’s only one in Czech. Seventies and eighties translations of Faulkner and Hemingway, for example, all look tastelessly alike, whereas originally they were in totally different styles and had nothing in common. When books by these two authors, for instance, are stylistically similar in Czech, it doesn’t mean that they were bad translations of course. Translations had to be readable, they couldn’t drag too much and they weren’t supposed to distract the reader from the context. And Czech simply doesn’t have this stylistic range.

In English there are no grammatical rules, just grammatical recommendations. When Faulkner decided not to write apostrophes, his book came out without apostrophes. When Bukowski decided not to write capitals at the start of each sentence as he was too lazy to hit the shift key, the book came out without capitals. When Kerouac wrote On the Road all at one go on a toilet roll and he told his publisher not to correct the typos as they were all Freudian, Jordan published it typos and all. In Czechia you write something and the Czechifiers will come running to say that Pensylvánie is spelled with a single N! What about William Penn then? Doesn’t matter, they say. Under the new Czech rules Pensylvánie is written with one N.

So the Czech tendency not to step out of line shows up even in the spelling?
Even there. Anything that is too thin or too thick. Anything that stands out from the average, with breasts too large or too small, or hair that’is not what is expected, or with an N too many is bad.

You left the Czech Republic when you were twenty-two. Did you know the unofficial literature at that time?
I read samizdat and exile works but the great majority when I was already outside the country. In Czechoslovakia I knew that it existed but it was a total mystery for me. I might have been around the dissidents a lot or even drunk with them beer. Jáchym Topol also said somewhere that it took him four years to accept dissent even though he sat in the same pubs as its representatives.

After you emigrated you quickly got to publish in exile journals.
They sent out for me to write something. They came to me through Škvorecký.

How did a young girl get to make an impression on Škvorecký?
It was actually very easy  to do. He appreciated me enough to travel from Canada to New York on the basis of the manuscript for my novel Péra a perutě, which I had sent him. He couldn’t believe that a young girl had written it. He thought some older established Czech writer had taken him for a ride. He was sixty by then, but he was still a good-looker. We had a Manhattan, which he drank regularly, and it was amazing. He brought along the Jewish author Heda Kovály, who is no longer with us these days.

How have you managed to publish in such prestige magazines as the New York Times and Penthouse since the revolution?
An agent found me. Round about 1990 Czechoslovakia was in fashion and at the time I was one of the few Czechs who had experience of communism within living memory and who at the same time was able to write an article in English. Unfortunately all this came to an end round 1994-95 and then nobody was interested in us. But to this day they still use my first book at universities all over the world to teach them what it was like in Communist Czechoslovakia, because in contrast to some excellent books by Hrabal for example, Péra a perutě  was relatively schematic. It was basically a list of everything that annoyed me about the Commies. Péra a perutě was brought out in English in 1992 as Truck Stop Rainbows  by Farrar Straus & Giroux in New York, translated by David Powelstock. But perhaps it wasn’t entirely the best. If I’d waited another two or three years to publish it, I would have translated it better myself. The English version was handled by that agent.

You haven’t published anything in English since 2000.Don’t you feel there’s an enormous difference publishing books in a world language and in the language of a small nation?
Of course, it would be great if I had more books published in English, but English literature is saturated with absolutely so much. Twenty years ago I was a Czech pioneer. Kulatý svět came out in English and above all my book about driving a taxi in New York, which attracted the greatest response. I went down as one of the not so many people who have written something about this job in New York while actually doing it. Gimme the Money  was brought out by a London publisher, I translated it myself and it didn’t go through an agent. For a short time I had an agent in London but he soon gave it up. And I’m not able to write and promote myself at the same time.

I am the first to write about black-white relations in Czech. And this subject needs to be promoted here because in the USA and Britain, interracial tolerance is now completely normal. In Czechia it is still an issue whether or not the blacks are just monkeys. When I walk down the street with Kenny in Britain, nobody notices. In the suburb where I live they all like us and we are an established couple. I go to the shop to buy some yoghurt and the woman at the counter asks me straight away where my husband is. How is he? He hasn’t been in for a while. We walk down the street here and an old dear stares round at us for so long that she bumps into a lamppost. Huge difference.

From the “insular” viewpoint afar how do you see the current political climate in Czechia?
Quite exceptionally it annoys me. I voted in the last elections a few days ago but it was a negative vote. It seems the politicians here have learnt to get on very nicely with corruption, by which I don’t mean to say that there aren’t any uncorrupt politicians. But knowing who to vote for shouldn’t take years of study. You should know who to go for.

Interviewed by Jaroslav Balvín

says editor and novelist Jan Němec, whose fictionalized biography of a prominent Czech photographer comes out this month.In 2010 you were among three authors nominated for the Jiří Orten Prize with your short story collection Hra pro čtyři ruce (Game for Four Hands), but you did not convert the nomination, as Jan Těsnohlídek actually won. Are you sorry?
That is a question that I don’t ask myself retrospectively. As an author you can perhaps say this much – that almost every prize is rather better to receive than not receive. Of course, this does not have much in common with the actual writing, but it helps in “literary life”. And you have to live a literary life at least for some time.

A little known fact is that you made your debut back in 2007 with a poetry collection entitled První život published by Větrné mlýny.
A lot of prose writers started out with a collection of poems. Then they like to exalt themselves above themselves, but the experience of poetry is crucial: it promotes fully aware use of language, it compels you to select and weigh your words one after the other. There are many authors who unconsciously submit to the language and just write automatically. It’s funny. Language is a power and as you write it can also be a partner, indeed the only one that you have. Apart from what we are going to say to each other, writing poetry is less demanding on time in comparison with prose, and when you are eighteen you have a lot of other important things to do…

How did the stories later published in Hra pro čtyři ruce, which was published by Druhé město in 2009, actually come about?
As long as you are not an established author, but just a “literary freelancer”, you write what you fancy as a rule and you feel happy on Earth. But then at some point, unsurprisingly you realise that your texts are intertwining somewhere underground and that this twine makes some kind of sense. It struck me that all my stories include a feeling of unrequited or unconsummated love. So the book acquired the subtitle Málem milostné povídky – Almost Love Stories. When I look back I have the feeling that this was just another stage on the road from poetry to prose. Short stories are also an excellent laboratory for another reason. You can try various approaches and discover your various voices.

I presume that when you were writing them you had no guarantee of publication.
I didn’t. I offered the manuscript to Host publishers, where I had just started to work, but Mirek Balaštík rejected it. I sent the book to Druhé město, and Martin Reiner accepted that same manuscript.

In that case you made an interesting tour of the Brno publishers: this autumn your third book Dějiny světla is being brought out by your home publisher Host at last. Its catalogue of publications tells us that it will be a literary biography of the famous photographer František Drtikol. Why did you decide to write about him?
It was the powerful symbolism of light that attracted me to him: he spent the first part of his life as an artistic photographer and worked enthusiastically with external light, which he said made photography. At the turn of the century he was studying in Munich, which at that time was at the heart of the Secession style, and again Secession was amongst other things a style of lighting. He later became a world famous creator of nude scenes, but in the latter half of the 1920s he became absorbed in himself and discovered inner light. He turned away from the world and went into seclusion. His is an interesting and in many respects rather an unCzech fate. Our sort rarely manage to give up what we have achieved, even if in each person’s life there comes an important moment when nothing helps you gain so much. Drtikol finished de facto at his peak. He showed the courage to give up what he had based his livelihood on. He gave up the symbol on which art is based, in favour of a direct quest for the truth. He radically changed his life and spent the second half of his life as a spiritual teacher. His followers, including Eduard Tomáš, also famous thanks to the television series Paměti mystika, Memoirs of a Mystic, speak of him as the first patriarch of Czech Buddhism. And that, after all, is quite fascinating: the man who was the first to exhibit a female nude in this country is the same one who was to translate the Tibetan Book of the Dead into Czech. This all smacks of integrity…

Quite a number of books have come out on Drtikol. Are you contributing anything new?  
As far as the facts are concerned, only minor details. It is a novel, so I am more like thinking things up… When you go through the available literature on Drtikol, you soon find that it is divided up in a strange way: on the one hand there are works by photography historians who deal with the first half of Drtikol’s life and do not talk much about the other, with the exception of the last Anna Fárová. And then there are the reminiscences of his spiritual disciples who sometimes did not even know that Drtikol was a famous photographer. This looks like a real rift, but when you look closely at Drtikol’s story, you find it has a clear line running through it and makes sense. Just like a story of light.

It should be said that his work is harmonically based: remember, we are still speaking about pre-avant-garde art, which swore on beauty and truthfulness, and so had an affinity to the spiritual, which is just its natural extension. Contemporary art is cynical, playful, socially engaged and goodness knows what else, but rarely does it allow itself to be serious and passionate. As was considered desirable at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. Perhaps this also attracted me to Drtikol: the possibility of writing directly without scoffing about basic things, such as beauty or seeking inner truth. Today artists are driven into a corner where they hatch plots or masturbate. For once I have had the good fortune to avoid that…

And what about Drtikol’s Communist involvement? How does that fit in?
Drtikol’s life included several notable transformations and contradictions, and that is why it is such interesting material. But I shall stick to what you have asked. In 1945 he became a Communist and remained in the party throughout the 1950s, when he also espoused Buddhism and his followers considered him to be fully enlightened, until his death in 1961. In his diary he wrote “Buddhism = Communism” and he said that Buddha was the first materialist philosopher, long before Marx and Lenin. So from today’s perspective his biography has quite a bizarre coda.

In this respect Drtikol is somewhat reminiscent of Egon Bondy.
The two of them actually met. Bondy mentions in his memoirs that Drtikol set him straight when he was still a confused young man – which I feel he continued to be for some time. In Drtikol’s case, however, joining and remaining in the Communist Party is all the more mysterious, considering that in the First Republic he was completely apolitical.

Have you come to any conclusion in your book with regard to this contentious point?
It was not my aim to arrive at any conclusions, or even to judge the hero of my novel. Others are there for that. I can only surmise. He came from Příbram, which was an important mining town under Austria-Hungary, with the largest silver mines in the entire Empire, so that fact that he tended towards a left-wing worldview is biographically understandable. Besides, few artists are right-wing liberals. That is kind of incompatible, whatever people might think. Even as a youngster he was enchanted by the Pan-slav idea: boys at Sokol used to say that the Russians would come one day and liberate us from Austrian, that is Germanic subjugation – and that is what they did… But let’s not forget that Drtikol was born in 1883, which means a completely different historical awareness to the element we float in today.

It is easy to understand why he joined the Communist Party in 1945, but it is rather more difficult to grasp why he stayed in it throughout the 1950s. In the early 1950s he wrote letters to his followers, which were full of not only Marxist but even Stalinist claptrap, urging them to leave the church and join the Communist party.. It’s a mystery if he ever later reassessed all this. For example, his personal papers include a newspaper cutting on the Chinese occupation of Tibet, so I presume he must have at least been aware that Communism did not equal Buddhism… But I would not like to give the impression that this stage in Drtikol’s life particularly interests me in any way. In the novel it is just a peripeteia, but we can learn from it: even people who are spiritually mature can be entirely confused. I’d say that spiritual disciples don’t have it easy at all with their teachers.

You had been interested in Drtikol for a long time and now you knew enough about him. So what did the actual writing involve?
You never do know enough. I spent a lot of time in libraries, archives and museums. But I was not reading so much of the literature about Drtikol himself, because that is not all that extensive, as books presenting the historical context: when you are writing about somebody who was born under the Habsburgs, and lived through the First World War and the First Republic, you first have to form an impression of the mental map of the time. Then it was essential to find the key to how to tell this story at all. I don’t want to be tedious with technical details, but for example, for a long time I was wondering whether to write in the third person or the first. I tried both. The third person struck me as remote, whereas the first person gave me an itch because I was going beyond the limits: I’m not František Drtikol and I’m not interested in simulating him. It was only then that I came up with a way to precisely reflect the situation of an author who has decided to write about somebody else. It’s what is known as the du-form, the second person, meaning that I actually address Drtikol. So the entire book is actually a dialogue between the author and the character, although the author doesn’t actually speak for himself at all. In the book the author doesn’t have a different I to the you, that is important. And in the end it actually turns out that the addressor is not the author.

Is the du-form reader-friendly? You wrote the novel on Drtikol in Polička and Krakow.
My primary task is not to be reader-friendly. Clearly, the du-form used throughout the novel is a bit of an experiment. Still, the dialogue is more vivid for most people than any other speech situation. It needs to be tried.

So Poland first. Were you in residence there at Villa Decius, where the Arts Institute sends Czech authors?
I did apply for a residence there, but this brings us back to your first question: Do you have to live a literary life to have a claim to a living… And that is why it is rather better to receive a prize than not to receive one, precisely because of these small favours that become available to you as a literary persona. Jan Těsnohlídek, who received the Orten Prize, was at Villa Decius at the time, so I made my own arrangements. Together with my girlfriend, who was at Krakow on an Erasmus placement, I rented a small flat in the centre and we saw Jan in the bus. Although we are practically strangers, our paths do cross considerably: a long time ago we even had the same girlfriend – though of course not at the same time. We don’t cross that way. I remember him from that time as a long-haired faun who wrote brittle lyrical texts and shared them at Písmák.cz.

And Polička  – is that your home town?
I was born in Brno and lived there all the time until I was 22. Then I moved to Polička for a year, where I had only ever been once before, so I didn’t know a living soul there. The first notice board I came across had an advert for a cheap flat with a view onto a garden, ramparts, an avenue and a pond. I lived there alone just for myself without any special plan or intention. And when that flat came vacant again about three years ago, and by the way, J. A. Pitínský’s daughter lived there in the meantime, I rented it again together with my parents. And at the beginning of last year I went back there to write, as I had finally managed to sort out my external life around that. However this novel is received, I spent a great year in my own way. It’s unbelievable but you could ultimately be happy if something wasn’t continuously forcing you into molds that are not for you.

Interviewed by Jaroslav Balvín

says Dutch translator Edgar de Bruin, owner of the Pluh Literary Agency, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. What do you think ought to basically change in our attitude towards authors and translators?
Translators of Czech literature deserve much greater care and attention from the Czech Republic, as they are very much to be credited for its publication abroad. The annual meetings of Bohemists (who are not necessarily active translators) organized these days by Book World are not enough on their own. This issue was dealt with in detail some time ago at iLiteratura during the iLiForum on Czech literature abroad.

To briefly summarize, translators from Czech these days are no longer always associated with Czech studies abroad, but they could be supported more if translators’ workshops were organized and/or a translators’ centre established. If the Arts and Theatre Institute can provide residential stays for foreign authors (of no great importance in the case of the Dutch author last October), why aren’t such opportunities open to translators of Czech literature, who need them much more for their work?

At the same time the standard of translation has a direct bearing on how works are received abroad. For example, the Expertise Centre for Literary Translation (Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen) in the Netherlands has been experimenting recently with workshops online, which not only significantly reduce costs, but also circumvent other organizational problems. Another effective way for translators to develop professionally is through mentorships, while an award for the best foreign translation from Czech literature (if only every two years, at least for translations into world languages) would be of great symbolic and practical value.

Interviewed by Zuzana Kůrová