همه‌ی ترس‌هایم

Dopisy Dubence #selections

by Bohumil Hrabal, شیما روحانی (translator), سیدخلیل حسینی (Editor)

متن معرفی: از پشت جلد این ویرایش: خدایان نیز این سرزمین را ترک کرده‌اند؛ هرکول و پرومته، قهرمانان دوران باستان نیز رخت بربسته‌اند. همسرم هم بهتر دید این زندگی را ترک کند، درست مثل پرل، دختر خاخامی از براتیسلاوا که عاشق من بود و من هم عاشق او، چون خیلی شبیه همسرم پیپسی بود...

در آغاز سال 1989م که رژیم کمونیستی چک‌اسلاواکی روبه افول بود، «بهومیل هرابال» پس از سکوت ادبی طولانی‌اش، دوباره شروع به نوشتن کرد. او این‌بار متن‌هایی کوتاه و شخصی نوشت که خودش آن‌ها را گزارش‌هایی تغزلی نامید. او بعد از ملاقات‌هایی که با یک دانش‌جوی امریکایی، «آوریل گیفورد»، داشت این متن‌ها را به‌شکل نامه‌هایی خطاب به دُبنکا -آوریل گیفورد- نوشت که درواقع الهه‌ی الهام‌بخش سال‌های بعدی او بود. این نامه‌ها که محدوده‌ی زمانی 1989 تا 1992م را در بر می‌گیرند، بازتاب بخش‌هایی از وقایع زمانه‌ی هرابال هستند که او آن‌ها را به‌شیوه‌ای درونی و سیال، و به‌گونه‌ای شاعرانه اما هدفمند به رشته‌ی تحریر درآورده است.

شناسنامه و مشخصات ظاهری
سرشناسه: هرابال، بهومیل، 1997-1914م
عنوان: همه‌ی ترس‌هایم
پدیدآور: بهومیل هرابال Bohumil Hrabal
مشخصات نشر: مشهد، ترانه، 1392ش
مشخصات ظاهری: 244 صفحه، 21.5 در 14.5 سانتی‌متر
شابک: 9789645638793
ترجمه از: Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka, 1998
موضوع: هرابال، بهومیل: 1997-1914م
شماره‌ی کتاب‌شناسی ملی: 3248415
مترجم: شیما روحانی، 1357ش
ویراستار: سیدخلیل حسینی، 1343ش
نوبت چاپ: اول
سال انتشار: 1392ش
شمارگان: 1500 نسخه
قیمت: 9500 تومان

فهرست
مقدمه‌ی مترجم7
فلوت جادویی9
خودکشی عمومی29
چند جمله61
اسب سپید89
طوفان نوامبر105
ساعت دیوانگی139
حیف‌شد که در عوض تا سرحد مرگ در آتش نسوختیم! 155
ترس‌های کلی 191
شال صورتی 235

Genres: Czech Literature, Nonfiction, Biography, Classics, Literature, Autobiography

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Born in Brno-Židenice, Moravia, he lived briefly in Polná, but was raised in the Nymburk brewery as the manager's stepson.

Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.

He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladimír Boudník in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.

His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("kočenky").

He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlatého tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met the Czech President Václav Havel, the American President Bill Clinton and the then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on January 11th, 1994.

Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to the objections of the authorities, including The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (Městečko, kde se zastavil čas) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále).

He died when he fell from a fifth floor hospital where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.

He was buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Hradištko. In the same grave his mother "Maryška", step father "Francin", uncle "Pepin", wife "Pipsi" and brother "Slávek" were buried.

He wrote with an expressive, highly visual style, often using long sentences; in fact his work Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964) (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) is made up of just one sentence. Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are also a recurrent theme.

Along with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera - who were also imaginative and amusing satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages.

Reviews

[Mohammad Hrabal]

کتاب عالی بود. لذت بردم. فقط چند نکته برای آنها که هنوز نخوانده اند:
1- در صورتی که به هرابال و کارهای او علاقه مند هستید به نظر من ابتدا دیگر آثار او را بخوانید و در آخر این کتاب را بخوانید.
2- متاسفانه کتاب تا حدود زیادی غلطهای چاپی و املایی داشت.
3- در مورد کیفیت ترجمه و سانسور شدن اطلاعی ندارم چون ترجمه انگلیسی را پیدا نکردم.
***************************************************************************
خورشید فقط وقتی بیرون می‌آید که تو را به خاطر می‌آورم، حتی اگر آن روز بارانی باشد...ص31.
روس‌ها بسیار ارادتمند قطعات شورانگیز موسیقی شان هستند، شاعرانشان... یک بار بعد از اینکه مرا به مهمانی بزرگی برده بودند، در سکوت از شهر به حومه رفتیم و آنجا در میان تک و توک خانه‌های روی شیب تپه میزبانان روسی ام ناگهان کلاه‌های خزشان را از سر برداشتند و دو دستشان را در هم قلاب کردند، گفتم این چیست؟ و آنها با شور و حرارت گفتند که اینجا همان جایی بوده که زمانی پوشکین با سورتمه از آنجا عبور کرده است ص42
تنها هدف بودنم در این دنیا نوشتن تنهایی پر هیاهو بوده، همان تنهایی که سوزان سانتاگ در نیویورک گفت یکی از بیست کتابی بوده که تصویری از نوشتار این قرن را می‌سازند...ص85

[Bjorn]

It's 1989. Bohumil Hrabal is old. He writes letters to a young American named April, called Dubenka, a young woman fascinated with Bohemian (capital B) culture and his writing, which he thinks is mostly in the past.

He writes about aging, about the grief over his dead wife, about the kittens he takes care of.

He writes – extensively – about the concept of killing yourself by jumping out of a fifth floor window. (Defenestration, after all, is a genuinely Pragueish concept.)

He writes about hanging out at his old pub, drinking beer. Really, there's an awful lot of beer in this.

He writes about literature, art, movies. He fanboys Hasek, Sandburg, Warhol and Kerouac, he ponders Kundera and Havel – the ones who went in exile (whether abroad or in jail) for their convictions, while he refused to sign the charter and stayed to be able to write brilliant, subversive but not overtly political books.

He writes to a young American who seems to have opened a window for him, a new way of looking at himself and his work. He writes about his life, his youth, his books, how unashamedly (and rightly so) proud he is of Too Loud A Solitude and what he had to do to be able to write it.

He writes about the American book tour she set up for him, a Spinal Tap-esque trip through a strange land filled with strange people (being cluelessly if benignly racist in the process), speaking at colleges where they only want to ask him about politics, trying to get photo ops with people he admires who may or may not have ever heard of a drunken, aging Czech genius.

And how it all seems to go out the window (and yet somehow becomes even more important) when the demonstrations start in Vaclav Square, when the velvet revolution comes, when students take to the streets and demand the freedom he always found in writing. Does he have the right to join them? Does he have the duty? Does he even want to?

He writes letters. He doesn't send them. Seven years later, after he falls out of a fifth floor window while feeding pigeons – it's ruled an accident, of course – presumably, she gets to read them. And I can't help but wonder if she recognises herself.

Everytime god – or the government, which pretty much adds up to the same thing in the 20th century – closes a door, people open windows instead. Bohumil Hrabal's books is one of the most fascinating ones, and his autobiography (if you can call this spontaneous, funny, matter-of-factly sad, self-righteous, self-deprecating collection of letters that) is no exception. I can't do the beauty of his prose justice with anything I could write, but you owe it to yourself to read Hrabal.

[Nafiseh]

«ولی آقای هرابال، خیلی سطحی و دم‌دستی است که آدم مثل هایدگر بگوید خدایان از این دنیا رخت بربسته‌اند، هرکول رفته، پرومته هم. گوش دادن به این حرف‌ها اشکالی ندارد، آقای هرابال، ولی محتوای این جملات بیشتر از یک پول سیاه که بدهی بالای صد گرم گوشت آشغالی نمی‌ارزد، چون یکی از دانشجویان جوان رشتۀ فلسفه، آقای هایدگر، نشان داد که شاید خدایان قدیمی مرده باشند، اما خدایان جدیدی متولد می‌شوند که باید بهایی بپردازند، حتی اگر این بها گوش بریدۀ ونسان ون‌گوگ باشد که هیچ اسطوره‌ای لازم نداشت، اما آثارش دنیای مرئی را شفاف‌تر ساخت...
پس ظرف دو روز گذشته واقعاً چه بر سر این شهر آمده؟ به نظرم مشکل نیروهای مسلح پلیس و نظامیانی است که وقیحانه در کار جوانانی مداخله می‌کنند که از قدیس اسطورۀ خود را خلق کرده‌اند. به نظرم مشکل نیروهای مسلحی است که به خودشان حق می‌دهند با مردمی مبارزه کنند که نه اسلحه دارند، نه سنگ و چوب، مردمی که فقط واژه‌های‌شان را همراه آورده‌اند و سوت‌های دوانگشتی‌شان را، مردمی که حتی با کالسکه‌ بچه‌های‌شان را هم آورده‌اند. اما شبیه آن زمان نبود که اولیس داشت زمینش را شخم می‌زد و آن‌ها پسر کوچکش را در شیار زمین، جلوی خیش گذاشتند تا خدای خدایان مجابش کند در جنگ تروا مبارزه کند... با این همه، آخرش چه شد؟ چشم با اشک شسته می‌شود و قطره‌های اشک چشم از گاز اشک‌آور قوی‌ترند، لباس هم که خشک می‌شود یا اصلاً می‌شود رفت یک دست نویش را خرید و جوانان دستگیرشده هم بالأخره آزاد می‌شوند. زندگی دوباره به روال سابقش بازمی‌گردد... جداً، آقای هرابال؟ به منوال سابقش برمی‌گردد؟ به‌ هیچ ‌وجه! آن جوانانی که فعالانه در اعتراضات شرکت کردند، یا حتی در روح و در ذهن‌شان معترض شدند، نمایندۀ نوعی تعهدند، نمایشی از همبستگی و ادای دِینی مثبت به نیروی «خیر»، خیری که باید در آینده از نو به دستش آورد...خلاصه نشستم در کافۀ ببر طلایی و مثل همیشه به این فکر کردم که چه خوب می‌شد اگر خدایان دوستم داشتند، کاری می‌کردند همین‌طور که دارم آبجو می‌خورم بیفتم بمیرم.»


فاجعه ی نام‌ ناپذیر دی در تمام دقایق زندگی بال گسترانيده ، معاصر اضطراب های مدید و در تأخر یک رنج نابردنی.و من داشتم خیال میکردم که اگر یک روز ، یک نفر آن دو شب نام ناپذیر ما را نوشت ، من ای که ما را می خواند هم مثل گودریدز فارسی عزیزم آخرین شمع بی اشک اش را با کتاب ها و برگ های کاغذ ها خاموش خواهد کرد؟ که اصلن زنده خواهد ماند زیر آوار تراژدی های دیکتاتورها و موشک ها و نمی دانم‌چه نوع سلاح های سر‌ّی ابر قدرت های دموکراسی آورنده ؟ وقتی همه چیز انقدر بن بست و خدشه داره سكوت خدا بيشتر به گوش و چشم مياد و خودش هم خوب ميدونه كه اين جور مواقع آدم هاي عادي ،كاملن عادي كه دلشون نه جنگ میخواست نه امر به معروف و نهی از منکر بیشتر بهش شکایت و سکوت میکنن، من یه آدم انقدر عادی ام که فقط یکبار مُرده و برگشته ،خدا و جهان دیگرش رو دیده و بعد از اون چاره ای جز باور کردنش نداشته ،اینکه این موضوع در من ِ بی اهمیت چه تاثیری در چه چیزی داره هم هیچ تاثیری در هیچ چیزی نداره ، «اگر خدایان دوستمان داشتند ؟ »این بار اگر این آخرین شمع ام خاموش شد و گنجشکهای قلبم پرواز کردن دیگه دلم نمیخواد دوباره برگردم . گوش های عزیزت با من هست آقای پروردگار؟خودت میدونی که چقدر تو و آدما و گربه ها رو دوست داشتم و دارم.

«آه پدرم ، اگر ممکن است این جام رنج و عذاب را از مقابل من بردار»
انجیل متی۲۶:۳۹ آخرین مناجات عیسی مسیح با خدا


کاش وقتی ما رو می نویسند گنجشک های قلب هیچ کس توی جهان آرزوی پرواز نکنند.

[Elham Ghafarzadeh]

بهومیل هرابال نویسنده‌ی دوست داشتنی من ‌یک پیرمردِ خاطره بازِ و خوش سخن و ترسو و عاشق حیوانات به خصوص بچه گربه‌هاست.. دیگه چی؟ همین کافیه تا من دیوانه وار از یک انسان خوشم بیاد. علاوه بر شخصیت دوست داشتنی هرابال توصیفاتش از جامعه توتالیته اون زمان‌های چک و تاثیرش در زندگی نویسنده واقعا جای تامل داره. مشکلم با این کتاب فقط توضیحات مترجمِ که بعد از هر نامه آورده و هی باید موقع خوندن متن کتاب دنبال پاورقی‌ها که بعد از هر قسمت آورده شده بگردی که یکم خسته کنند‌ه‌س.
از طوفان نوامبر، ساعت دیوانگی و ترس‌های کلی فوق العاده خوشم اومد و اینکه باز هم تاکید می‌کنم توصیفات نویسنده از هر‌ آنچه که براش اتفاق افتاده بی‌نظیره..
از این بهتر کسی می‌تونه توصیفی داشته باشه؟
صفحه 102، اسب سپید
دبنکای عزیز، حالا در کرسکو هستم، مه آلود است، گربه‌های کوچک خیس شده‌اند و ملتمسانه می‌خواهند که اجازه بدهم که بیایند و گرم شوند، اما من درمان آب سرد را باور دارم، به این ترتیب آن بیرون در انبار همچون عیسی‌های کوچولوروی کاه و یونجه می‌نشینند...
یا در صفحه 194، ترس‌های کلی:
و بانوی دانمارکی عزیزم، به چه طرز وحشتناکی می‌ترسیدم، و به چه طرز مهیبی حتی امروز هم می‌ترسم! مادرم هم تمام زندگی‌اش به طرز بدی می‌ترسید، به آن همه ترسیدن عادت کرده بود... اما حالا دیگر نمی‌ترسد، چون مرده‌است... مرده‌ها آرامش دارند... می‌بینی ـ مادرم این داستان را درباره‌ی خودش تعریف کردـ یکشنبه روزی که من هنوز در رحم مادرم بودم، بابا بزرگ بی‌پروایم درست قبل از ناهار مادرم را با منی که هنوز درونش بودم به حیاط کشید، تفنگی بیرون آورد و نعره زد... زانو بزن، می‌خواهم شلیک کنم! و مادرم ، دختر بچه‌ای بالغ، دست‌هایش را در هم گره کرد و به خاطر من التماس کرد... بالاخره مادربزرگم بیرون آمد و گفت بیا تو و غذاتو بخور وگرنه همش سرد میشه! به این ترتیب بانوی دانمارکی، ما رفتیم که غذا بخوریم و این هم من که اینجا هستم... اما آن ترسی که از درون رحم مادرم احساسش کردم، با من ماند...

[Jonfaith]

I emigrated inwardly, here to the pub for example...

These letters managed to both entertain and move me considerably. Hrabal met the American scholar April Gifford during her visit to Prague. He then pens these letters, but apparently never posted such. Following a wonderful Hrabalian trajectory, the missives dance back and forth through time and across a half dozen nations (yet strangely arriving consistently in public houses) over decades. They recount his visit to the United States as well as to the UK. So again pubs are the prisms by how he depicts matters. A Czech beer garden in London is featured; one which is so popular even Hungarians are known to visit. It goes without saying that each Sunday the place is flooded with the Irish who drink two gallons each of Pilsner before stumbling out the door singing their laments of Erin. The Velvet Revolution is looked at obliquely, as instead Hrabal tenderly recounts the passing of his wife. He is asked by a Danish journalist how he survived totalitarianism and he replies, in total fear, by literally shitting himself and dealing with the samizdat publication of his work. He gained allies and continues to struggle with such compromises. Hrabal is a maestro but he never flinches from establishing that he's foremost a flawed human.

[Peyman]

شاهکار دیگر هرابال

هرابال را به تصادفی‌ترین شکل ممکن و با دیدن کتاب «نظارت دقیق قطارها» پشت ویترین یک کتابفروشی شناختم (چه اتفاق جذابی). همان کتاب برای اطمینان از یافتن یک لذت بی‌کران کافی بود. لذت با کتاب «تنهایی پرهیاهو»و داستان تنهایی عجیب و غریب «هانک» دو چندان شد و صادقانه با کتاب «واهمه‌های با نام و نشان» به حد اعلا رسید. هرابال آبروی ادبیات چک است و برای هر کشوری داشتن یک نویسنده به این عظمت هم نعمت بزرگی است.
به‌واقع تفاوت یک استعداد به کمال رسیده و استعدادهای سوخته نویسندگان ایرانی در مقایسه این کتاب و مجموعه نامه‌های منتشر شده از نویسندگانمان را می‌توان به وضوح دید. من مجموعه نامه‌های صادق هدایت به شهید نورایی، نامه‌های فروغ به شاپور و دو سه اثر دیگر نویسندگان ایرانی را مطالعه کردم و واقعا تفاوت یک سری نامه‌ی محدود و سرسری که صرفا درباره‌ی ابراز احساسات یا ناله‌های روزانه با ادبیاتی دم‌دستی را با یک اثر عمیق متوجه می‌شویم. با خواندن کتاب واهمه‌های با نام و نشان، با شخصیت هرابال، دغدغه‌هایش، تنهاییش و غم‌هایش آشنا می‌شویم. با شرایط اجتماعی کشور چکسلواکی در دوران حکومت کمونیستی آشنا می‌شویم‌ (که تشابهات بسیاری با شرایط الان ایران دارد). با بسیاری از نویسندگان چک و نقاشان و آثار بزرگ دنیا مواجه می‌شویم و به نظرم مهم‌تر از همه از جام شیرین زبان شیوا و خودمانی و صمیمی هرابال می‌نوشیم. یکی از جذاب‌ترین قسمت‌های کتاب گریز‌های نویسنده و صحبت‌های او درباره‌ی مسائل مختلف در قالب یک داستان واحد است که در نگاه اول داستان‌ها بی‌ربط به‌نظر می‌رسند ولی با هنر هرابال همه به تکه‌های یک پازل تبدیل می‌شوند.

خوش به حال دوبنکا که این نامه‌ها برای او نوشته شد.
هرچند که هیچ‌وقت به دستش نرسید

[Ava]

کاش کسی توو یه جایی از دنیا نشسته بود و همچین نامه هایی به من می نوشت. نامه هایی که هیچ وقت به دستم نمی رسید و یه روزی توو یه کتاب فروشی ای تیترش رو می خونمد که نامه هایی به آوا. جدا از این فکر می کنم که خیلی از ما ها همچین کاری می کنیم. با کسی ، چیزی ، مخاطبی توو یه گوشه ای از دنیا از ترس هامون حرف می زنیم. از روزمون میگیم. از این که خودمون رو چه طور دیدیم. خودمون رو می ذاریم حول و حوش مرکز دنیا و شروع می کنمی به حرف زدن. " من این جا بودم. از این لیوان نوشیدم و این ها کسانی بودند که خواسته اند دور و برم باشند."

این پیرمرد پر حرف ِ خیالباف و ساده رو که انگار با کمی لا پوشونی و اغراق از خودش حرف می زنه ببخشید. نه به خاطر پیر بودنش یا این که بعضی وقت ها قابل ترحم بودنش. فقط و فقط به خاطر این عشقی که برای خودش ساختهو ازش برای خودش حرف می زنه. از خودش.

خوندن کتاب برام سخت بود و اصلا نمی دونم چرا. البته یه بخشیش بر می گرده به نا آشنا بودن آدم ها و حوادث

منتظر ترجمه ی " من خدمتکار پادشاه انگلیس بودم" هستم.

مهر 93

[Maria]

I love Hrabal, and this book of never-sent letters is stunning, heart-breaking, elegiac, suicidal, drunken all at once.

[Poupeh]

Read it and finally finished the translation and handed it to the publisher!!! crossing fingers for it to get permission for publication!

Amazing humor amidst all the bitter realities he brings forth. Hrabal seems so cold and yet so emotional, so bitter and yet so funny, and the way he moves from serious matters into banal issues, into pure nonsense and comes back, the way he takes you along with him...

Eye opening, with all the similarities one can find in his and other artists' situation in the time of dictatorship with ours, not that ours is dictatorship... and making you somehow hopeful, that one day there might come an end...

[Spiros]

I needed something to take with me to the beach, as I was just finishing re-reading THE WAY WE LIVE NOW, so I picked up this cheery tome of epistlatory essays written preceding and during the Velvet Revolution, the end of Soviet hegemony in Czechoslovakia during the late 1980's. Wonderful stuff, full of dread and deep humor, especially those pieces describing Bohumil's speaking engagements in the US and the UK.
Unfortunately, half way through the book I set it down on or near the buy counter at work, and odds are I'll never see it again. City Lights hadn't gotten in another copy when last I checked.

HAPPY ENDING! So, I showed up to work after my weekend, and one of my wonderful co-workers had found my copy of this book for me. I celebrated by reading it through from the beginning. Great stuff, well worth savoring. I take a foolish, parochial pride in Hrabal's constant references to Dubenka's "San Francisco" (April Gifford, whom Hrabal addreses as Dubenka, was in fact a graduate student at Stanford, but why split hairs?), including this astonishingly ingenuous quote: "I suppose London must be just as colorful a City as your own San Francisco, Dubenka, but the chill of the place enhances the nip of the colours, wherever you look Impressionist canvases just leap out at you, the soaring expressivity forces you to wipe your eyes, the dazzle gves you conjunctivitis, reflexes of colour and light, closing and opening of windows, like the welding of a steel track..."

[Stephen]

These never sent letters end up being an autobiography never told to Hrabal's friend April from the 'Delighted States.' Both sad and beautiful, Hrabal comes off as one of the characters in his novels, which means that this collection of letters is more entertaining than your average -or even your better collections of letters. Told in his flowing meter and grandfatherly way, Hrabal recalls his botched trip to the states, his driving around London trying to follow the narrative of T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', and some of the most grimly-angelic references to his wife as a pigeon. Also, Hrabal foreshadows his own death from falling out of a fifth story window which is the fate, he argues, of all the great writers. Hrabal has a way of taking the ugly in the world, the regret or the blood on his pillowcase, or life behind the iron curtain and the paranoia of being questioned by the secret police, and turning it into something more beautiful than sunsets and daisies, and still at the same time bringing the humor of a Chaplin film.

[Robert Wechsler]

One of the saddest books I̕ve ever read, the memoir of an old drunk who happened to be a great writer. It̕s the liveliest extremely sad book I̕ve ever read. It̕s a mishmash of memories of a long, eventful life, literary and otherwise. There's nothing like it.

[Blazz J]

Slovenski prevod izbranih Hrabalovih (neodposlanih) pisem je omejen zgolj na dobrih 60 strani; mnogo premalo, da bi slovenski bralec lahko doumel pofebruarsko literarno urednikovanje pod burnim očesom češkoslovaške Javne varnosti.

[Jeroen]

It would be difficult to be a Central European writer in the twentieth century and write in disregard of history as it continuously unfolds around you. For most of the great literature that has been written about the wars that tore Europe apart and the regimes that subjugated all those proud European peoples to all of those well-documented horrors, the main goal has been to somehow be able to convey the unspeakable tragedies that transpired, to spell it all out and relate it life-size, so as we never forget. In the oeuvre of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal on the other hand, I get almost the opposite sense. Not, of course, that he is reducing or naysaying or even ignoring what has happened, but he is trying to make it manageable; he is trying not to write about it, but through it. Hrabal as he portrays himself in these fake-ish memoirs, is not a hero of the resistance. He is simply a man living under a totalitarian regime, an artist who sees his expressive possibilities limited. I remember Josef Skvorecky in his The Engineer of Human Souls describing Hrabal as being “as closely watched as his trains”, and in Total Fears we get a little insight into what that entailed precisely. As opposed to the protagonists of his Closely Watched Trains, Hrabal does not trip clumsily into a desperate act of rebellion. He is simply a man afraid, trying to maneouvre his way through the mazes and mousetraps of East Bloc politics. The Albanian writer Ismail Kadaré once said, after being castigated for not taking a firm stance against the Hoxha regime, that he himself never claimed to be an “Albanian Solzhenitsyn”: “Dissidence was a position no one could occupy, even for a few days, without facing the firing squad,” Kadaré opined. Whether this was actually the case or not, it is surely silly to divide writers labouring under restrictive regimes into heroes and zeroes based on how vocal they were in their opposition. Kadaré continued to say that surely his opposition was ultimately reflected in his work, and Hrabal could make a similar claim (though thankfully he does not feel obliged to). “I wouldn't swap that signature on 'A Few Sentences' [an anti-regime petition] for eighty thousand copies of Too Loud a Solitude”, Hrabal notes, and he just might have a point here. Maybe getting that book actually out there could have ultimately meant more to the Czech people than his one signature.

I think Hrabal shows very well here the machinations of the Western press, for whom every Czech writer around this time had to be seen in the terms of the great Václav Havel, and the other Charter 77 artists. Hrabal goes on tours through the US (or the “Delighted States”, as the American student of Czech to whom these letters are addressed mistranslated the name into Czech) and the UK, and of course everyone wants his take, his politics, wants basically for Hrabal to commit to the greatness of the free West. But really, our dear Bohumil just wants to sit in the pub and get drunk.

There's this great Guy Debord remark – a boast, really, in Debord's typically topsy-turvy world: “I have written much less than the majority of people who write, but I have drunk more than the majority of people who drink.” This fits Hrabal to a T, or it certainly fits the image Hrabal likes to portray of himself here. Most of Hrabal's books are perfectly compact (if dense) novellas. And if we have to believe his own words here, when he was not writing he was most likely to be found in the pub. It's also hardly an accident that both in America and Britain Hrabal obsesses over precisely those writers who were, amongst many other things, great drunks: T.S. Eliot and, of course, Dylan Thomas. Early on in Total Fears, not without a hint of pathos, Hrabal proclaims:

So I sat in the Golden Tiger and I thought, as I'm always doing, about how, if the gods really loved me, I would just drop dead over a glass of beer.

And somehow this pathos fits our author and therefore becomes very affecting; it is part of Hrabal's (surely deliberate) attempt at passing himself off as some simpleton who happened to stumble and fall face first upon the key to great literature. Which is to say, he passes himself off as Hanta, the protagonist from Too Loud a Solitude, who works a menial job compacting old paper and in the process rescues great works of literature from being pulped. Hanta is a common man who just so happens to start reading Plato, and Hrabal is echoing that, toying with that, he is playing the senile old writer whom life has bludgeoned into docility. But of course this is not just play: he is old, and he is tired. He repeats himself all the time, his sentences lapsing in and out of ellipses, not seeing themselves through. He is forgetting names – come, who was that guy who stole fire from the gods again? - or (surely!) pretending to forget names. He almost succeeds to, succeeds in making you forget how great a writer he is while you're reading him, even though what you're reading right then and there will be perfect and highly original. You forget, until he hits you out of the blue with some great line, like when he passes a bunch of girls “in their best make-up... as if they were on their way to a big party, a friend's wedding – but these girls are a wedding in themselves, they have wedded themselves to a joyous, human infinitude, in them the essential is conceived and made manifest, in them the dictate of being is manifest,” or when he describes a woman's voice – with which she keeps herself “spellbound” – as “like the sound of a million coins pouring out a slot-machine, coin after coin cascading after a lucky break into your joyful cupped palms, till all the million coins are emptied out.”

On the very first page our author writes that he has “reached the peak of emptiness and everything hurts”, and I guess you could argue that the rest of the book is an attempt to explain how things got this far. But, as I began this piece, I think there is a sense in which Hrabal has always been driving at the void, is always trying to reduce life to something that he can somehow manage. It is like David Berman sings in that Silver Jews song: “Grant me one last wish / life should mean a lot less than this.” Somehow, this sense, this plea, is all over Hrabal's work for me. At the end of this book, he is toying with the idea of letting a wedding video in which he traipses around with a boa constrictor around his neck be the thing that will represent his being, his whatever, from beyond the grave. This is wonderfully ridiculous, of course, coming from such a towering literary figure, but it is to be expected from Hrabal. But then it is as if he himself suddenly understands his urge to reduce, too. “Maybe the height of achievement,” he starts to conclude, “would be just to wipe the video clean so that only the empty tape remained.” If only wiping this symbolic video clean was as easy as wiping an actual video clean actually is. Then we could all return to our favorite pubs and drop dead over a glass of beer. How wonderfully facile an escape that would be.

[Iza]

Totul în "Scrisori către Dubenka" are gust de bere, începând cu Revoluţia de catifea, mişcările studenţeşti, tumultul trăirilor, zborul porumbeilor alungaţi din pieţe, şi continuând cu amărăciunea răzleaţă a gândurilor lui Hrabal.
Gândurile lui Hrabal sunt ca argintul viu, acum îţi pune sub priviri o “negresă care stătea într-o cabină luminată, negresa era aşa de grasă, încât cabina parcă stătea pe ea ca un palton gros de iarnă…”, ca mai apoi să sară la descrieri mai sentimentale: “Dubenka, dupa aceea zilele şi orele au trecut în zbor, ca atunci când răstorni masa la o nuntă şi totul se rostogoleşte pe jos în virtutea legii căderii libere…”. Trecând de la o idee la alta, textul e o adunare de frânturi de aducere aminte.

[Ludo]

Solitudine, gattini, birre, paura e la semplicità di Kersko, dove ancora oggi è immerso il piccolo cottage di Hrabal, luogo privilegiato per una scrittura che lo mise spesso nei guai ma che lo aiutò a sopravvivere.

[Maria Mng]

Not just words and letters! The book is showing the ultimate idea what makes literature meaningful and therefor beautiful (for the reader and for the confessing writer).

[James Klagge]

I picked to read this b/c we were traveling to the Czech Republic and I wanted to read something really Czech. Hrabal fits the bill. Not only that, but while we were there the Germans were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (11/9/89), and this book covers the same period of time, the Velvet Revolution in CZ, in a series of letter/memoirs. Not as charming as some of his other works, but contains some nice rambles.

[Malcolm]

This is part memoir, part epistolary novel, all writerly: Hrabal was one of the great voices of 20th century fiction and in this memoir of sorts he explores the significance of writing, the perils of growing old, the politics of literature in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, and being married. Lovely, haunting, and worth revisiting.

[Pat Olvera]

The old man had a spirit up until he passed. He found life & inspiration in the revolution. Fun read for any fan of his & Czech Lit. Recommend "Closely Observed Trains" or "I Served The King of England" first.

[Lysergius]

Wonderful letters about all sorts of things. Redolent with erudition and the distilled experience of a lifetime of living under repression these letters are a thing of beauty. What can you say about a man who goes to London to look up all the references in "The Waste Land?

[Todd]

"Memory makes the past into a new present." --Hrabal

[Peter Edelman]

One of my very favorite writers. Archipelago Books will have something new from him April 2014, can't wait.

[Phil]

Hrabal approaching caricature of himself.

[Glykerion]

Hrabal is wonderful! Each and every line is a feast. And one learns so many things from his texts!

[Nima Yghb]

شرح حالى از زبان خود هرابال بر ترس ها و افسوس هايش در قالب نامه هايي به يك دختر جوان در زمانيكه همسر خود را از دست داده و در تنهايي است.

[Santino]

3.5 - Really interesting insights into Hrabal.

[Pooya Kiani]

واگویه‌هایی در قالب نامه و خودزندگینامه که به بررسی جغرافیا و تاریخ ترس‌های همیشگی و ناتمام نویسنده‌ در زمانه‌ی رژیم(های) توتالیتر می‌پردازد. و شاید تلاشی باشد برای پاسخ به این سوال از جانب وجدان زمانه: چرا تو را بیشتر تحمل کردند؟ چرا در زندان نپوسیدی؟ چرا اعدام نشدی؟ هرابال بسیار پیر تلاش خواندنی‌ای برای تبرئه‌ی خود می‌کند، اما می‌شود دید که برای جلب نظر و باور ما دروغ نمی‌سازد.

از متن:

به این ترتیب پلیس مخفی مرا با او دید و یک روز در بلودره مرا در گوشه‌ی تنگی گیر انداختند و گفتند که می‌دانند من دارم این را از آن‌ها مخفی می‌کنم که آن خدمتکار رابط من بوده است، که عادت داشتم در مورد فلسفه با او حرف بزنم، که او دارد سامیزدات‌های چاپ‌شده روی کاغذ مرغوب را برایم ردیف و چاپ می‌کند... من نزدیک بود به آن‌ها بگویم که هفته‌ی آتی واقعا چه می‌شود... اما اتفاق کاملا غیرمنتظره‌ای افتاد، آن دوست خدمتکارم از دیابت مُرد، او را در اتاقش مرده پیدا کرده بودند، کاملا تنها... به این ترتیب من یک بار دیگر از آن سرنوشتی که در کمینم بود قسر در رفتم، از سرنوشت کسی که خیانت می‌کند و رفقایش و بقیه‌ی آدم‌هایی را که در آن‌ها با کافه می‌نشیند لو می‌دهد، اما من از این بی‌گناهی تا سرحد مرگ جا خورده بودم و پلیس مخفی‌ها این را می‌دانستند، حتی منتطر ترس و لرزم بودند، در حقیقت برای ارتقای هراسم به حقه‌های ریزی فکر می‌کردند...

[Sophia]

Rather tragic. A meandering novel that captures total hopelessness, fear and a gentle sort of suicidal ideation. This book has the best opening of any that I've read, even as the sentences last for two whole pages lol.

[Sheska]

If I’m honest, I wasn’t planning to read beyond The Magic Flute, this book’s first entry and an indirect connection to All My Cats, yet Hrabal’s writing style was so meandering, melancholy, and captivating that in the end it was difficult not to finish the whole thing. His reminiscences of his late wife were so touching and it was fascinating seeing all those references to the people who influenced him in one way or another. I certainly didn’t expect to find the names of Vladimir Vysotsky, Franz Werfel, or Philip Roth in this collection. Nor did I realise what a fanboy Hrabal was of Hašek’s Švejk, T.S. Eliot, and Joyce’s Ulysses. Just reading of his plans for (what I’d like to think as) a pub crawl along Leopold Bloom’s Dublin route made me grin from ear to ear.

"To be educated, Dubenka, is a part of entertainment, and without enjoyment there’s no point in education."