DWIE NOWELE - JEDEN TEMAT: BOŽÍ DUHA JAROSLAVA DURYCHA I ADELHEID VLADIMÍRA KÖRNERA
Two novels – one subject: Jaroslav Durych’s Boží duha and Vladimír Körner’s Adelheid

Summary/Abstract: Jacques Le Goff’s thesis (from his recent book entitled History and Memory), which joins eventful history of our epoch with the sensitivity to differences, multiplicity of cultures and to others, became a starting point of the article devoted to the introduction of two novels - Jaroslav Durych’s Boží duha and Vladimír Körner’s Adelheid. The author, referring to this ascertainment as well as to the reflections of German phenomenologist Bernard Waldenfels, follows various writing strategies in the texts, at first sight linked by almost everything: subject, genre and publication time. Only deep analysis of both works allowed to notice two different approaches to complicated Czech – German relations in the period following the expulsions. Durych, one of the first prose-writers who had approached this subject already in the 50s, does not expose traces of otherness, avoiding, for instance, linguistic differentiation of his nameless characters. It makes the nature of the text more universal similarly to an allegory about wine and forgiveness. On the contrary, Körner, approaching the same subject of the encounter of Czech man with German woman, underlines various origins of his characters through naming them and through referring to different literary tradition. Also different course of events makes Adelheid a text about the impossibility to reconcile two various nationalities which history condemned to coexist.

• Details
• Contents