Text, trhlina, zkamenělina: k jednomu hrabalovskému motivu

This article is based on a Hrabal motif from the introduction of his novel Vita nuova (1986), diagonal reading. Unlike most interpretations I argue that this concept need not be bound merely to the motif of the fluency of the text and the absence of punctuation, but also to the motif of the halting of the reading process, which I shall provisionally call a ‘gap’. Comparing Hrabal’s text with passages from Barthes’s Le plaisir du texte (1973), I endeavour to demonstrate that Hrabal has formulated a paradoxical experiment, probably unique in modern literature: he de­mands inattentive reading whereas the modern experimental novel demands attentive reading. (Barthes links inattentive reading with the classical narrative, which he terms the ‘lisible’, readerly). In short, the uniqueness of this experiment consists in Hrabal’s actually writing, as he stated, something that he assumed the reader would not read.