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Communist Czechoslovakia in Sylvie Germain, Daniela Hodrová, and Jean-Gaspard Páleníček

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Communist Czechoslovakia in Sylvie Germain, Daniela Hodrová, and Jean-Gaspard Páleníček TRAUMATIC HISTORIES: REPRESENTATIONS OF (POST-)COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN SYLVIE GERMAIN, DANIELA HODROVÁ, AND JEAN-GASPARD PÁLENÍČEK Submitted by Clare Frances Horáčková to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French in November 2014. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………………. 1 Abstract Through a study of the work of three important writers, this thesis engages with the traumatic memories of the second half of the twentieth century in Czechoslovakia in order to highlight the value of literature in widening critical understandings of the continuing legacy of this complex era, which was dominated by totalitarian regimes under the Communist governments which gained control after the upheaval of the Second World War. Whilst these years were not unilaterally traumatic, many lives were dramatically affected by border closures and by the experience of living under a regime that maintained control through methods including confiscation of property, surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, show trials, and executions. Many of the stories of this era could not be published openly because of censorship, and the persecution of intellectuals led to a wave of emigration, during which a number of writers moved to France. Using theories of trauma, exile, illness, and of self and other, this thesis opens up a dialogue between the work of three writers who engage, albeit from very different perspectives, with this little-explored intersection between Czech and French. The first chapter explores Daniela Hodrová’s translated Prague trilogy as a first-hand witness to her nation’s dispossession and as a form of resistance to the deletion of memory. The second chapter considers the painful transgenerational legacy of the era as it plays out in the work of bilingual writer Jean-Gaspard Páleníček. Chapter Three considers the ways in which the Prague novels of established French author Sylvie Germain negotiate the fine line between an appropriation of the stories of the other and a moral responsibility to bear witness. By bringing these authors together for the first time and locating their work within French Studies, my work foregrounds the need for Western criticism to pay attention to other valuable voices who can contribute to our understandings of the traumatic experience that has shaped modern history. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr Helen Vassallo for introducing me to so many of the critical concepts that have shaped this thesis, and for her inspiring guidance, patient encouragement, and meticulous attention to detail. Thank you to Dr Fiona Cox for her positive input during a period of cover supervision, and to my second supervisor Dr Richard Mansell for drawing my attention to alternative angles of approach. My thanks also go to both Professor Martin Sorrell and Dr Jonathan Evans for inspiration during my MA, and for encouraging me to continue to a PhD. I am grateful for the support of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Exeter, and for the bursary awarded by the AHRC which allowed me to undertake this thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their support and for introducing me to the pleasures of France, and of course Jan, Taddy, and Anna for everything over the past three years. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Table of Contents 4 Abbreviations 7 Introduction 8 Widening Understandings of a Traumatic Totalitarian Legacy 8 Three Writers, One Traumatic Context 21 Daniela Hodrová and ‘A Crisis that is Not Yet Over’ 23 Jean-Gaspard Páleníček and a Legacy of Traumatic Memory 26 Sylvie Germain and a Transnational Perspective 30 Outlining a Critical Context for the Analysis of the Primary Texts 34 The Intersection between the Central European Context and the French Language 36 The Embodiment of the French-Czech Relationship in the Primary Corpus 41 ‘Understanding the Past in Order to Reclaim the Present and the Future’: The Importance of Reading ‘Other’ Stories 48 Chapter One Daniela Hodrová: (Re)Writing Czech History into the ‘Narrative Web’ of Memory 53 Part I. Writing from a Context of Traumatic Silencing 53 Literary Context and Criticism 60 A Novelist and Scholar of Literary Theory 68 The Cité dolente Trilogy and Other Fiction 74 Part II. A State of Pain: The Trauma of Being Cut Off from the Body of Europe 80 The Fear of Deletion as a Symptom of Being Cut Off from the Body 83 Sleep and Sheep: The Dual Traumas of Submission and Sacrifice 96 Death by Drowning? 107 4 Haunted by the Ghosts of the Past 112 Part III. Spinning a ‘Narrative Web’ of Memory 119 Writing as Preservation of Memory 124 Writing as ‘Fugue’? 134 Writing as Return to Life 146 Chapter Two Jean-Gaspard Páleníček: Tracing the Ghosts of a Painful Past 153 Part I: History or His Story? 153 Occupying a Position between Two Countries and Two Languages 156 Reading Les Bouleaux as ‘Un Tableau Métaphorique de l’Histoire Tchèque’ 160 Reading Les Bouleaux as a Trauma Narrative 166 Part II. The Embodiment of Trauma 170 Unsettling History in the Figure of the Woman Protagonist of Les Bouleaux 172 Reading the Composer as an Embodiment of the National Identity Crisis 181 The Intrusion of the Traumatic Past 188 The ‘Existential Crisis’ of Twentieth-Century Communist Experience in Czechoslovakia 193 Part III. Silencing and Forgetting 203 A ‘Total’ Silence: Negotiating Silence and Speech in a Totalitarian Context 205 A Failure to Witness the Traumatic Past 212 Dying of Guilt? 217 Part IV. Remembering and Speaking Out 221 ‘Unearthing’ the Past 224 Negotiating the Distance between Communist and Post- Communist Versions of Life Stories 231 ‘“Me Faudra-t-il le Renier Pour Pouvoir Vivre?”’ Páleníček’s Generation and the Reinvention of Memory 235 Chapter Three Sylvie Germain: A Transnational Witness to ‘Other’ Stories of Pain 246 Part I. Writing from an Other Perspective 246 5 Tracing Germain’s Pathway towards Czechoslovakia 256 Four Texts about Czech Dispossession by a French Novelist 261 Part II. Germain’s Czech Stories as a Means of Transnational ‘Witnessing by Adoption’ 268 Germain’s Understanding of the Concept of Home and its Significance in a Context of Dispossession 270 Germain’s Identification with the (Czech) Experience of Exile and Dispossession 274 ‘Propulsée dans un Monde d’Horreur’: An Individual Awakening to a Universal Story of Exile through Evil 278 Regarding the Pain of Others 284 Germain’s Self-inscription into the Czech Narrative of Suffering 292 Part III. Reading Germain’s Czech Novels as Narratives of a National Illness 298 Writing out Solidarity with the Suffering Czech Body 300 ‘Une Plainte en Sourdine’: The Silenced Story of Prague 305 Blindness and Blame? 312 ‘Une Nausée’: Contaminated by a Regime of Sickness? 316 Part IV. Encountering the Other: A Textual Voyage from Sickness to Health? 323 The Encounter Motif: A Levinassian Philosophy of the Self 326 Writing as an Encounter between Individual and Collective Memory 332 A Journey from Sickness to Health: Reading the Czech Texts as ‘Quest Narratives’ 336 Conclusion 349 Appendix. Personal Correspondence with Jean-Gaspard Páleníček. 361 Bibliography 365 6 Abbreviations Footnoted references to primary texts will be made using the following abbreviated forms: BR Sylvie Germain, Bohuslav Reynek à Petrkov: Un nomade en sa demeure (St-Cyr-sur-Loire: Christian Pirot Éditeur, 1998). ES Sylvie Germain, Eclats de sel (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). Imm. Sylvie Germain, Immensités (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). LB Jean-Gaspard Páleníček, Les Bouleaux (Paris: Revue K, 2008). LP Sylvie Germain, La Pleurante des rues de Prague (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). RO Daniela Hodrová, Le Royaume d’Olsany, trans. by Catherine Servant (Paris: Laffont, 1992). VP Daniela Hodrová, Visite privée: Prague, trans. by Catherine Servant (Paris: Chêne, 1991). 7 Introduction Widening Understandings of a Traumatic Totalitarian Legacy Although Daniela Hodrová, Jean-Gaspard Páleníček, and Sylvie Germain occupy diverse writing positions, each engages with the stories and memories of the Communist era in Czechoslovakia and, in different ways, the work of each author forges a perhaps unexpected relationship between Czech and French.1 The sociohistorical context in question is a troubled and complex period of history which spanned a half-century, from the Czechoslovak Communist Party (Komunistická strana Českoslovesnska, or KSČ) coup of 1948 until the Velvet Revolution ended the regime in 1989. Having been occupied throughout the Second World War by Nazi forces, Czechoslovakia was assigned (along with other countries in the region of Central and Eastern Europe) to the Soviet Bloc at the Yalta Conference at the end of the Second World War, and for the next four decades was subjugated to a regime of Soviet- led totalitarian law. Borders were closed, routes of communication with the West were shut down, and the all-powerful Party maintained control over almost every aspect of political and domestic life by means of a system of intrusive surveillance and punitive measures, including the show trials, imprisonments, 1 Note that I use ‘Czechoslovakia’ when referring to the period between 1918 (which saw the political formation of the First Czechoslovak Republic (První Československá Republika) after the collapse of Austro-Hungary during the First World War) and 1991, when the country split into two independent republics, Czech and Slovak, two years after the end of the Communist regime. When referring to the post-Communist period, I therefore use the terms ‘Czech’ and ‘Czech Republic’.
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