2024-08-25 16:58:28
Just as we have sadly come to terms with the fact that tomatoes in the supermarket sometimes just look like tomatoes, even if they don’t taste like that, we have gotten used to expecting more from contemporary Czech prose than an exciting plot or a burning, if possible, current topic. Hana Lundiaková’s new collection of short stories reminds us that fiction can also offer atmosphere, that even storytelling has the ability to smell intensely and taste bittersweet.
Forty-six-year-old Hana Lundiaková is one of the few enfants terribles of Czech literature. In addition to writing, she paints pictures and mainly devotes herself to music – under the stage name Stinka, she published three generally remarkable albums. Her novels and short stories tend to have restless themes, in terms of narration and quality.
Instead of repeating best practices, she is constantly trying something new. After the 2021 prose Hyena, which was a study of an extraordinary rascal hidden behind the mask of a decent person, Odeon has now published her book of short stories Planetka.
They are not just collected stories that would not be enough for a novel. They are held together in several ways: the new protagonists enter the spaces that were already introduced to us by the previous ones – as if they were all moving to predetermined places. On one such, the figure of the painter losing his sight reappears in various forms. The heroes walk a fine line between the ordinary and the extraordinary. And most stories function as parables – they open a wider or deeper topic, they have an overlap.
We find ourselves in the world of dirty station pubs or cowsheds, where the corpses of dead calves are lying at the door. It is an environment full of mess and stench that cannot be washed away. Even the destinies of its inhabitants tend to be provisionally patched and wired in all sorts of ways. No intellectual problems and ideals, but a settled life. Here a co-worker at the printing press sticks his head into a cutter, there is a terminally ill child at home.
Even in these gloomy settings, however, the characters find a certain, often surprisingly strong, humanity. Here, too, there is a willingness to help others. Whether it’s people in a corporation and within reach of everything they might need, i.e. Prague, or Broumovsko – the author’s native region, but at the same time a location of hopelessness, insurmountable exclusion and deprivation.
The author of the book, Hana Lundiaková, is also a musician, she performs as Stinka. | Photo: Adrian Hyrsz
The good-natured narrator of the story called Holota lives there with the hope that Marěna, who fled to the capital, will one day return to him. His life, for years filled only with exhausting work in the quarry, would then finally have meaning. Although the good guy has a smart phone, he still believes his superior: “Please, do you know how many people there are in Prague? 13 million, Karl, 13 million!”
Lundiak’s weirdos don’t have that cheesy pearl at the bottom or in their broad soul that can be brought to the surface through storytelling. If they show humanity, for example by caring for others or helping those who are even worse off, this does not automatically guarantee an improvement in their lot. They continue to be hopeless losers. The world does not immediately and automatically reward good for good. But there is hope in that humanity, excellent all the more the darker the background of the story’s backdrops.
Hana Lundiaková is remarkably able to capture the atmosphere of especially excluded locations. This is how one of the storytellers names today’s Sudetenland: “Silenced gossip, complaining, one or two judgments, cursing, slander, snickering, talk of envy and frustration.”
In contrast, Prague appears completely different. It’s as if the two destinations can’t understand each other, because the problems of one seem ridiculous compared to the other – and vice versa. While the difficulties associated with life in the metropolis may seem artificially inflated, the heart of darkness undeniably lies in the hopelessly excluded Czech countryside. Finally, we hope to renounce revivalist kitsch for idylls on old bleachers.
Some of the short stories from Planetek have already been published in magazines or in the format of audio recordings, Lundiaková transferred three of them to the new collection from the first book Vrhnout, published 14 years ago. Only in such an organized whole, however, do they transcend themselves and create a coherent, suggestive integrated image. A world of dirty, poor, humiliated, but still maintaining a humane dimension where the going gets tough.
A lot of strong moments stand out from the whole, and the taste fades long after you’ve finished reading. For example, the statue of Christ at the crossroads, which the stonecutter dresses up in a váták after he decides to go to Prague to see his beloved Marěna, even though he has been farthest so far in Krnov.
Hana Lundiaková: Planets
Odeon 2024 publishing house, 144 pages, 299 crowns.