Jiří Kratochvil: (Nejen) postmoderní pohled (nejen) na české dějiny
Jiří Kratochvil: (Not only) Postmodern Reflection of (not only) Czech History

Summary/Abstract: The report concerns the attitude towards history in Jiri Kratochvil’s prose. Even though he is not strictly an author of historical novels, his works are before all novels about history and about its reflections upon an individual’s destiny. In Jiri Kratochvil’s prose we can find many signs of postmodern writing, most of them strongly, even extremely expressed. Furthermore, his writings represent a bright example of postmodern writing as such, and particularly of postmodern writing about history. However, postmodern is only the formal side of Kratochvil’s texts. The attitude towards history, the perception of history with him is anti-postmodern; it has nothing to do with classical postmodern lack of historical credibility and indifference about history. To the contrary, Kratochvil attributes to and recognizes in history an endless stability, strength and meanings; an irrational power, comparable to the relationships of love and sex or even to the strength of family ties. The literary reflection of Czech and European history in Kratochvil is, therefore, truly different than the manifestations of this reflection in other examples of postmodern prose. The reasons for that can be sought in the author’s personal fate, as well as in the peculiarities of the postmodern situation in all post-totalitarian countries, and particularly in the Czech Republic.

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