2024-06-15 20:03:03
Radka Denemarková has been some of the awarded Czech writers overseas for years. Though she received 4 Magnesia Litera awards at dwelling, on the similar time her novels are coated by a foggy veil of one thing unique and unusual; they’ve a popularity for writing solely for individuals who discover their strategy to them. The newest prose referred to as Chocolate Blood confirms this maybe much more than the earlier ones.
Anybody who chooses modern Czech fiction based mostly on gross sales rankings or percentages on the E-book Database web site will simply get the impression that literature means neat, well-understood and easy-to-understand tales that clearly inform the reader not solely how all the things turned out, but in addition easy methods to perceive it. However literature additionally exists to show us to unusual experiences, when studying turns into a battle, getting offended, helpless hesitation. It’s these works that power an individual to step out of their consolation zone and keep within the thoughts for months or years after studying.
Selecting up one in every of Radka Denemarková’s works is like coming to a lonely cottage the place nothing works and nobody lends a serving to hand, however that is why we’ll bear in mind the keep years later. Not solely did we see one thing, we additionally realized loads about ourselves.
This additionally applies to the novel Chocolate Blood, revealed by the Host publishing home, which on this respect follows on from the creator’s earlier prose works, of which Cash from Hitler, revealed in 2006, has already discovered its approach into commencement studying lists. The aim of Denemarková’s books is rarely to speak on the reader, to supply him catchy phrases linked to superficial knowledge, however to assault him, unsettle him, immediately shake him.
Once we begin studying the novel, all the things appears clear – Chocolate Blood is a historic novel set within the nineteenth century. We watch episodes from the lives of the writers Božena Němcová and George Sand, to which the businessman John D. Rockefeller will likely be added as an apparent counterpoint. Different international locations, different occasions; due to this fact, their destinies don’t intermingle, however they’re clearly alleged to make clear one another. And step by step they purchase increasingly contours each in similarities and primarily in variations.
Within the e-book, Rockefeller is the embodiment of evil – a businessman utterly devoid of feelings, an inhuman rational machine that strives for wealth and energy by eliminating competitors and abusing the humanity of others. His story weaves an online of monstrosity for which humanity means weak spot.
The novel options businessman John D. Rockefeller (in a colorized {photograph} from 1913). | Picture: Profimedia.cz
George Sand acts as an emancipated insurgent who, in her personal time, was capable of assert herself and destroy the concept of a girl as a submissive accent depending on robust males. However he can do it additionally as a result of he has a bundle of cash and actual property.
Effectively, and in opposition to her, Bozena Němcová additionally seems as a insurgent, however crushed by monetary want, a short lived roof over her head, a employed husband and likewise the collectivism of Czech patriots, for whom the proficient author doesn’t match as a distinguished persona, however solely as a servant.
Author George Eliot, the Brontë sisters, Alfred de Musset, Fryderyk Chopin, Karolína Svetlá and plenty of different actual actors bought minor roles within the textual content. Nevertheless, such different, even opulent substances will not be supposed to place collectively some richly interconnected, advanced world. They enter the narrative as exemplary examples. And in the identical approach, the escapades of the three protagonists don’t create a steady story by which we get to know them increasingly and perceive what, how and why they do. Even the primary actors seem in Denemarková’s e-book briefly episodes, reminiscent of in {a photograph} or a brief movie. As a result of the refrain in regards to the transferring practice comes proper again, the reduce and we’re some place else, one other time.
We glance by means of the peephole into the non-public lives of long-dead individuals. Nevertheless, the aim is to not humanize the classics and bask in spices. The narrator all the time provides a portrait of somebody in a sure state of affairs after which some sort of lesson to be realized from it. Virtually each episode depicted is accompanied by a vehement, modern commentary.
With that peephole, we glance into the nineteenth century, however as quickly as we zoom out, the creator reminds us why she encourages us to take action: as a result of the matter attracts basic conclusions for us right now and right here. However the conclusions are novel, distinctly ahistorical, up to date for right now’s world.
Cowl of the novel Chocolate Blood. | Picture: Host publishing home
Drawing conclusions in regards to the blindness of nationwide patriotism, about social distress, and above all in regards to the destiny of ladies, affected by the flagrant restriction of their rights, makes the novel a pamphlet. And on the similar time, this neuralgic level assessments the reader’s angle. Once we perceive these passages because the creator telling us what she thinks, we break a stick over the e-book as a result of it comprises too many theses-like passages. They’re literal, moralizing and repeated as if in a litany, as an alternative of being deepened or nuanced.
However they may also be taken as a major inventive gesture: drawing conclusions from narrated episodes features as an have an effect on, an emotional extra, which instantly and repeatedly stops the narrated occasions and instantly dismantles what was created. It assaults us, forces us to interrupt away from the story and notice that the peephole into the previous doesn’t supply an escape to the great previous worlds, solely an organized picture. As if Denemarková have been saying: do not immerse your self within the idyllic panorama resulting in Ratibořické Fortress or a captivating Parisian salon. Though tales from the previous are instructed right here, it’s exactly and solely in regards to the present unsure world.
Have an effect on is a state the place we lose management over our personal physique. This then inadvertently tells in regards to the frame of mind. Which can also be mirrored within the novel’s characters. We do not observe their thought processes an excessive amount of, however the place of the physique, its dressing or revealing, transporting, sagging. Right here, footwear or rings converse greater than the mouths of the protagonists. Chocolate blood circulates in novel our bodies. Typically it is oil, generally it is ink, generally it is espresso.
And it’s this changeability, unreliability and fragility of what we see that serves as a unifying hyperlink between the photographs of the previous and the current. Sorting the prose into components and chapters borrows the metaphor of railway stops and switches. And all the things looks as if a practice trip. We see pictures and cuts, the readability of which adjustments. However we’ve to create the general impression and expertise ourselves. Will probably be completely different for everybody. Maybe Vladimír Merta final revealed prose so unusual, but attention-grabbing and in some way bewitching, when he got here out with the Cinderella novel in 2020.
Video: We’ve increasingly totalitarian regimes. We’ve decreased democracy to enterprise, says Denemarková (March 14, 2022)
“All world dictators, together with Vladimir Putin, solely reply to power,” mentioned author Radka Denemarková on DVtv. | Video: Daniela Drtinová