The Czech Fates of Words, Pictures and Songs
On Wednesday evening, Prague's Archa Theatre was the place where two figures from our non-normalized culture - Bohdan Holomíček and Vlastimil Třešňák - transmitted the results of their many years of creative work to the world. In both events, the work summarizes the fates of its own authors, and at the same time summarizes the collective of "stories". Wit a little pathos, we could call them a "Czech deal".
The monograph of photographer Bohdan Holomíček contains a collection of the authors' photography from the end of Sixties until today. The entirety closes with a chronicle of the population from Czech society, who didn't give in to the fascism, and closes with a series of prefabriacted socialism. Holomíček was like an "official photo-reporter" of the local dissidents and the non-conformist culture.
The second contributor to the piece was a novel of musician, photographer, painter and writer Vlastimil Třešňák, with the title The Key is Under the Doormat ("Klíč je pod rohožkou"). To Judge whether or not this literature is convoluted (without turning two pages into five hundred!) and would become the real Czech novel of this decade (how his publisher speaks about it), is meanwhile premature. A richly composed story, in which the author's fate threads his way with the reminiscence for the era of the police rookie (this part was written after Třešňák recognised that his own documents were with the Secret Police). But it proves that the possibilities of a great epic prose still are not passable, not even in Czech literature. At the same time, the interesting thing is that, until now, Třešňák - for whom writing was only one of the row many artistic professions he managed single-handedly- was an author of prose whether it be a story or "novella": such as his stories of Babylon (1982), Bermuda Triangle (Bermudský trojúhelník) (1986), novels …and He Urged the Horse with Blackberries (...a ostružinou pobíd koně) (1988) as well as The Most Important Thing About Mr. Moritz (To nejdůležitější o panu Moritzovi) (1989).
The most recent extensive text evidently arose from a large quantity of material that the author gathered during the last few years, when the most important event was Třešňák's irregular return to the mythical place of Karlín. To this over-smoked, pub-smelling periphery, he would wind up again and again: which was truly the substance in which his non-romantic poetry view on the world is taken.
Třešňák performed in Archa in an hour-long concert with the accompaniment of the musical gypsy family Kormani, whose household law also falls within the world of Karlín. He has played "ethnic jazz" with them from seventies and (with this the Gypsy musicians color Třešňák's civil, yet unusual, suggestive song), it confirms a genre not inserted into his musical statement. For many people in the audience, they are not a song, from song in which melody is unfasten, the literature difficult, and that they wouldn't become popular.
Třešňák's novel, as well as the photographic book of Bohdan Holomíček, was published by the Torst publishing house of Viktor Stoilov. This publishing house recapitulated five years of its activity, to which is so extraordinary important to the Czech culture.
Jiří Peňás, Lidové noviny, 15. 9. 1995