Talk:Bohumil Hrabal

apparently or allegedly?

Xx236 12:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Publishing Date

The text says this: "Several of his works were not published officially in Czechoslovakia until the end of communism 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)."

I am currently reading "I served..." in Czech from Ceskoslovensky Spisovatel (the Government Publishers) with a publication date of 1989. Does anyone know if the was really rushed out in the 6 weeks at the end of 89 after the November revolution, or was it legalised in that year as part of the "Glasnost" reforms leading up to the revolution? If the first then I would put "until after the revolution" if the second then "until the reforms during the last years of communism". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.212.16.30 (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

According to a book published on Hrabal's centenary in 2014, the first official Czechoslovakian publication of Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále was in December of 1989 as part of a collection of novelas called Three Novels (Czech: Tří novely). I think, however, the period was very confusing and it may have been easy to miss those publications that were rushed out and/or dates may be confusing. Indeed, I just found a copy of the edition of the novel you may be referring to. It is published by Československý spisovatel. Its copyright statement in the front does indeed appear to show that it was published in 1989. Look on the back, however, (and its ISBN details) it was in fact published in 1990. Presumably, the text was prepared with Hrabal in 1989. Krozruch (talk) 10:27, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

New work in English

Bohumil Hrabal's novel, "Vita Nuova," has just been translated into English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.32.106 (talk) 16:09, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Feeding the pigeons?

I think it is understandable that the article refers to the widely-circulated notion that Hrabal was feeding the pigeons when he fell out of his hospital window. It is repeated in many places in both Czech and in English. I recently found it here in The Guardian. Tomáš Mazal dedicates the first two chapters of his The Writer Bohumil Hrabal (Czech: Spisovatel Bohumil Hrabal) to Hrabal's last days and the motif of death in his work. Here he discusses and unpacks the many references to suicide in his work. Mazal saw Hrabal many times in this period and it is true, as mentioned in the article, that he referred to being called in a dream by a writer interred in the cemetery underneath his hospital window. He told friends "I am tuning into death as you tune in the needle of a radio into a station". It is relatively recently that doctors who worked in Bulovka Hospital have spoken of their conviction that Hrabal committed suicide but those who knew him have had no doubts of his intention to end his own life for some time. Tomáš Mazal, his friend and, later, biographer, said he wanted to end his life as a "frajer" ("dude" in very loose translation). I think the feeding the pigeons myth deserves a mention but that the emphasis should be changed so that the likelihood of his suicide is first emphasized with the many references to suicide in his work gathered around it. Some of these are very explicit, and this is especially so in his late work, following the death of his wife, Eliška, as for example in The Magic Flute (Czech: Kouzelná flétna). Here, following a long discussion of literary figures who killed themselves or wanted to kill themselves, he writes "I postponed my jump from the window". It is possible that Hrabal's death warrants a section on its own, but if not, I wonder if it might be possible to gather up the relevant references and the like here before transferring the most appropriate among them to the article. Should this be too lengthy, an alternative might be to gather up those references which cast doubt on the story of his feeding the pigeons and / or discuss it in terms of the reaction of doctors at the hospital to the death of Czechoslovakia's greatest writer while he was under their care, and then to remove reference to the myth. It is, incidentally, not mentioned in the current version of the Czech page. Krozruch (talk) 11:23, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your recent edits, great work. Based on your above comments it sounds like you know far more about the topic than anyone else recently editing the article (ie. me). Please go ahead and rewrite that section however you feel is most appropriate, we can always discuss any changes afterwards. Jdcooper (talk) 15:33, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the encouragement. I'll have a think about how best to approach it, gather up my sources, and will make an edit in the next couple of weeks, probably by contextualising talk of the pigeons rather than removing it. Since I am relatively new to the game I wanted to mention it here first so as to ensure I was going about it in an appropriate manner and not treading on anyone's toes. Your reminder to be bold is constructive. Krozruch (talk) 18:41, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

It's good etiquette to mention things on the talk page I suppose, but generally speaking you are probably within your rights to just go ahead and make the changes you think are sensible, especially if it's a topic you have in-depth knowledge of. Anything can be changed or adjusted afterwards, and on the vast majority of pages you will find that attempts to start discussions on the talk page are met with silence, so quicker to just go ahead. And if anyone implies that you've "trodden on their toes", remind them that they don't own the page! Good to have another editor on board with Czech topics anyway! Please consider joining the Czech Republic wikiproject, there's a lot to do. Jdcooper (talk) 12:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

It only took me four years but I finally edited this section. There is a lot more to be said about this topic in many ways since Hanta in Too Loud a Solitude refers to death as an entrance (there are three versions of Too Loud a Solitude, some of them involve Hanta's suicide and more explicitly this death as entrance, others the mere dream of same). Here, Hrabal is drawing on Rudolf Dvořák's translation of the Tao Te Ching but elsewhere, in his "literary journalism" ie. letters to Dubenka, he discusses a book about reincarnation. Also, specifically, and repeatedly, he mentions death by a fall from a fifth floor window. This is uncanny so may be of interest. Krozruch (talk) 16:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)