BRATISLAVA NA PRAHU – BRATISLAVA PRAHOV (MESTO V EPOCHE NORMALIZÁCIE: ŽIVOTY UNIKAJÚCE DUŠANA KRAUSA)

The article takes a look at the representations of Bratislava in Dušan Kraus’s debut novel Životy unikajúce [Lives Leaking; 1979]. It reconstructs the methods that model the city and its image in the context of other portrayals of the urban setting in Slovak prose (Ladislav Ballek: Pomocník [The helper]; Agáty [The locust trees]; Stanislav Rakús: Temporálne poznámky [Temporal notes]). The novel does not name the city in which it takes place, but from the names of locations and the typical spatial arrangements it pertains that the text is set in Bratislava. The differentiation of the spatial structure is complementary with the division of space into the private and public spheres. Social life functions (work and amusement) are situated in the centre while private lives unwind in the new housing estates at the outskirts of the city. Kraus portrayed Bratislava of the normalisation era in line with its period character, i.e. as urbs, but not as civitas (Olivier Mongin: The Urban Condition) – as a city without a public space. The novel works with two semantic layers. The narrative is of factual or even official record character, the symbolic generalisation rests on the double meaning of the title that evokes both a gas leak and the movement of its victims from life to death as well as the city as a fluid, unstable entity where life “leaks” from its inhabitants.