Grušův Mimner a jazyk paradoxu
Gruša’s Mimner and the language of paradox

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on the prose work of Jiří Gruša Mimner aneb Hra o smrďocha (Atmar tin Kalpadotia) (Mimner or Play about a Stinker). It is based on an interpretation of an imaginary “Calpadotia’’ as a “state of mind’’, and attention is focused in particular on “Calpadotian’’, the fictitious language of the totalitarian society, and especially the steps whereby the gradual adoption of the rules of this language play a role in the disintegration of the protagonist’s personality. The key to understanding the role of the fictitious language in the novella is found in the unusual way in which Calpadotian structures reality, both with its more subtle differentiation of individual concepts and in particular with its polysemy. This indicates how the usage of the same term for phenomena that Western readers do not consider to be associated helps to characterize Calpadotian society, which gradually assimilates the chief protagonist, as alien and incomprehensible to the point of absurdity. At the same time it works with the idea that such emphasis on the role of language opens up more general questions on its extraordinary nature. The study also compares polysemy in Calpadotian with polysemy in totalitarian Newspeaks and in natural languages, taking into account their literary usage. In polysemy and the association of the apparently inassociable the study seeks the source of the unease which the prose evokes, as well as the source of the paradox and the alienation which makes it a manifestation of artistic resistance to a dystopian society.

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