K reflexivnosti Vaculíkova Českého snáře

The present study deals with the problem of reflexivity in Ludvík Vaculík’s semi-autobiographical novel Czech Dream Book (samizdat 1981; English 2019). The notion of reflexivity is conceived of as the intersection of real empirical life and the fictional world. The real author approached a number of people from the dissident circle with a request to review the first version (and later the expanded manuscript) of his novel. This collective engagement with the text would then become one of the important thematic lines of (later versions of) Vaculík’s multi-thematic novel. The work is reflexive in yet other ways: correspondence with the author’s mistress Helena Bukovanská and others, for example, who eventually participate in the finalization of the novel. An important role in the subsequent reception of Czech Dream Book was also played by a book of reviews on the text, which Vaculík himself initiated and edited. This study analyzes a large amount of previously unknown material from the archives.