Literatura a život
Literature and life

Autostylization as a strategy in the autobiographical and essayistic texts of Bohumil Hrabal

Summary/Abstract: Hrabal often emphasizes that his work is firmly anchored in reality. He says thatit is based either on what had happened to him, or what he had heard from otherpeople and had identified with to such an extent that he merged in with it. Thisemphasis on the indivisible link between literature and real life is strongest in hislater autobiographical and essayistic texts in which he writes directly about himselfand not through narrators or literary characters as he did previously. In these textshe also thinks more systematically about what it means to be a writer, how he himselfdeveloped as a writer and what his objectives were in writing and in life in general.Characteristically, these texts cannot be reduced to what Hrabal says to us in them,as he frequently stylizes himself in various forms and makes use of a number of othertypically literary techniques. What Hrabal writes about and how and why he keepscoming back to the problem of the relationship between literature and life is a signof his efforts to come to terms with what is weighing him down. For him literaturebecomes a kind of adaptive strategy to deal with his chronic inability to be in thepresent moment.

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