An underappreciated philosopher and hey. Hrabal was born 110 years ago iRADIO

Bohumil Hrabal was born on March 28, 1914 in Židenice, Brno. He spent several years of his childhood in a brewery in Polná, where his mother married the accountant František Hrabal, the prototype of Francin in the book Postřižina.

Hrabal was able to find a pearl at the bottom and raise the divine in us, says Petr Kotyk

While Bohumil Hrabal got his first name after his biological father, who never claimed to be his, the writer bears his first and last name precisely after Hrabal.

He studied law, during the war he worked as a railway worker and dispatcher in Kostomlaty nad Labem, and he compiled this experience into the book Ostře sledáné vlaky. From 1949, he made a living in Kladno steelworks and later moved to collecting raw materials as a wrapper of waste paper.

“It was in Kostomlaty that Hrabal began to value the life he had led as a rich boy until then,” says literary historian Petr Kotyk for the Vltava station.

“As a doctor of law, he left among the last of the poorest, among cleaners, Roma diggers and workers in smelters in Kladno. And there he lived his difficult but rich life. Because he was looking for what he didn’t have in people, and he finally found it – a divine spark,” Kotyk is convinced.

Hrabal’s favorite clothing throughout his life was a navy striped T-shirt. “Even as a child from a rich family, Hrabal liked to go to Zálabí to play among the poorest children. And it was there that the porters walked in striped T-shirts – all dirty, sweaty, smelly. Hrabal wore these t-shirts all his life because he considered himself a sailor on the ship of the spirit,” explains Kotyk.

“He dug for that pearl at the bottom, he saw the divine in us, in people, and he was able to capture it. He thus raised them from a profane reality into a timeless sacred space. This makes his literature strong,“ highlights the literary historian.

“And also all the spaces in which Hrabal lived,” Kotyk continues, “through his writing, he elevated them to spaces that were enlightened by a certain sacrament.”

In addition, Hrabal’s presence was also woven into the pub U Zlatého tygra in Prague’s Old Town, where he was a regular guest, or in Kersk, where he had a cottage since 1965.

“I loved the moments when Hrabal very often acted like he was extremely angry with everyone, but basically he was an awfully nice person. And even if he sometimes expressed something slightly vulgar, he apologized for a long time afterwards,” recalls the writer for Radiožurnál Michal Pospíšil, former director of Czech Centers.

As Lao Tzu

Hrabal’s most famous works are precisely the Postřižiny, the closely watched trains, the too noisy loneliness, the Snow Maiden Festival or Perlička na dne, the Pábitelé and the advertisement for the house in which I no longer want to live. According to some of them, director Jiří Menzel made films.

“The rake is multi-layered. And the more I know him, the more it seems to me that he is elusive,” the writer’s biographer Tomáš Mazal assesses for Radiožurnál. “Menzel filmed only the upper facet. However, Hrabal himself did not write anything for theater or film. So those films are a kind of politics, humor, but it’s not Hrabal,” he judges.

Hrabal’s work still has an international reach. “For example, the Chinese translated Hrabal, among other things, because in their archetypal prose they very often refer to the old master Lao-tzu, whom they place next to the new master – who for him is Jesus,” literary historian Kotyk explains for Vltava.

Ten years ago, on the occasion of Hrabal’s 100th birthday, which he did not live to see, Kotyk published the book Příliš húlčná somato. “Working on it was like a mine – there was an awful lot of material. And the archive continues to be replenished, we recently received two hundred books of Hrabal’s translations,” says Kotyk.

Anniversary exhibitions

One of Bohumil Hrabal’s birthday celebrations takes place on Friday afternoon at ATstatus for the Czech languagey. On vernisandDuring the exhibition Too Noisy Solitude, the writer and theologian Pavel Hošek will present his book The Gospel according to Bohumil Hrabal.

Little Hrabalovská vystate of preparationand in May and Pa.mandthe so-calledandto Nandbornandhim Mrandsemenand. Translations of Hrabal’s books from all over the world will be on display there. “The covers of the books themselves speak about how individual nations and languages ​​perceive Hrabal,” adds Kotyk.

Bohumil Hrabal died on February 3, 1997 after falling from a window.

Tomáš Maleček, Šárka Švábová, nav, kac

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