Bohumil Hrabal. Wer ich bin.

Schubert, Peter Z.

Czech

Bohumil Hrabal. Wer ich bin. Susanna Roth, ed. & tr. Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp. 1998. 113 pages, ill. DM 32. ISBN 3-518-40961-1.

"The greatest Czech writer of the past three decades has died," reported the main Czech newsweekly T[plus-or-minus sign]den in its eight-page tribute to Bohumil Hrabal following his death on 3 February 1997. Similar praise previously appeared in the Czech press every time this popular author, who was awarded all the major Czech literary laurels and numerous foreign prizes and honors, celebrated his birthday. Among his great admirers abroad was the Swiss Bohemist Susanna Roth, who, in addition to her translations of Hrabal and Kundera and numerous articles on both writers, published her dissertation on Hrabal in Zurich in 1986. That monograph was subsequently published also in Prague, and as a result the author received the 1993 Pro Bohemia Prize awarded by the Czech Literary Fund to the best Bohemists. Unfortunately, she too passed away (on 11 July 1997) before the publication of Wer ich bin (Who I Am), now issued at last "in memory of Bohumil Hrabal."

The volume opens with Hrabal's German publisher Siegfried Unseld reminiscing, under the title of "The Great Question Mark of the Wonderful," on his visit to Prague and his meeting with the Czech writer back in April 1988. The actual text of Wer ich bin as translated by Susanna Roth follows, somewhat abbreviated from the original and divided into five parts. In the first of them Hrabal speaks about the influences that affected his work and depicts himself as a seeker of lost time. The essence of his creative style is rendered in the following statement: "I have always lived somehow and then written a commentary on my life." Hrabal also makes a point of asserting that he never wanted to change anything but himself, thus denying any part in his country's political struggle. Next, he recalls his family and roots. In the third part the seventy-year-old Hrabal writes about his habits and sclerosis, including the observation that writing is for him "a therapy, a psychiatric clinic." The fourth part is more spiritual and deals with the author's feelings and state of mind. Finally, in the last section Hrabal categorically rejects any political discussions while accepting the unavoidable reflection of politics in the arts, which he, like other artists, could not escape. The book closes with Roth's obituary-style note, "An Undeserved End," in which she uses a letter Hrabal wrote to her in 1989 and another recollection of a visit to Prague by Unseld, this time to attend the funeral services for Hrabal.

There are forty-nine photographs interspersed with the textual components of the volume, forty-five of them from Roth's private archives. A chronology outlines the most important events in Hrabal's life. It is interesting to note that Unseld refers to the writer as "a knight without fear and above reproach," although he certainly was reproached for his interview in Tvorba on 8 January 1975, in which he made an attempt to appease the authorities, and for the subsequent rewriting of passages in his works. On the other hand, Unseld reiterates the question of whether Hrabal committed suicide or fell from a window by accident, a question which has never been satisfactorily answered; Roth, for her part, does not seem to doubt the suicide hypothesis. She refers to the many allusions and references to death and suicide in his writings that make the answer obvious in her mind.

Wer ich bin is a well-prepared volume that will appeal to anyone interested in this Czech writer, despite the fact that the main body of the book-namely, the part written by Hrabal and "The Great Question Mark of the Wonderful"-was published in Hommage a Hrabal (1989), produced on the occasion of the writer's seventy-fifth birthday. The notes "An Undeserved End" and "The Last Hrabal Visit in Prague" are published here for the first time, and so are many of the photos.

Peter Z. Schubert

University of Alberta