Na okraj Nerudovy prózy

This article reflects on the innovations that can be noted in Neruda’s prose and which anticipate subsequent developmental phases (e.g. naturalism and symbolism). Neruda’s short stories are a combination of factual realism and authorial stylization, characteristic of what is known as the physiological sketch. The proto-naturalistic elements can be considered to be based on Neruda’s preoccupation with somewhat abnormal characters, handicapped physically or socially, a new image of eroticism, emphasizing the sexual motivations of human behaviour, an interest in the “insulted and humiliated” and Flaubert’s concept of the literary image as a sketch of “environment and passion”. As a rule, the autobiographical narrating “I” occupies the position of observer and witness for Neruda, and this “autobiographicism” effectively functions as a guarantee of the authenticity - the truthfulness, the “realism” - of what is narrated. At the same time, this “I” fully controls the narrative situation, and Neruda’s narrative mode is thus one of the most original variants of European Shandyism.