CIRCUITO DE PROTECCIÓN

We have determined that the narrator of Hakl’s Konec světa is a man. He is Jan Beneš, the narrating ‘I’ and the acting ‘I’ of the story he shares with us. He lives in Prague. The time is the end of the 20^th century and the first years of the 21^st century. Apart from this, what else do we know about him? How does he present himself to the reader? What is his place in the world he creates and perceives? What testimony about his world does he provide?

Jan Beneš’s perception of his own personality is created in interaction with the world in which he lives. His personality develops from numerous encounters with other people – with women, with his friends, with his family and with random people – and from the situations to which these encounters lead him. At the same time, his personality is also shaped by his own perception of himself and by his doubts about whether it is true. This is again happening within a process of comparing contradictions of different conflicting visions – ‘I’ as ‘I see myself’, ‘I’ as ‘I am seen by others’; ‘I’ as ‘I articulate myself within the world’, ‘I’ as ‘I listen to the world and to all it says about me’; and finally, ‘I’ as what

‘I want from life’ and ‘I’ as ‘what I should be wanting from life’. All these different approaches confuse Beneš’s internal world and the process of construction of his external reality. All these different approaches have the greatest impact on his personal relationships, on his work and on his overall attitude to society (not just Czech/Czechoslovak society) and what should be the individual’s place within it.

Jan Beneš is about 40 years old. He lives alone or occasionally with his friends, partners or random people. As far as we learn from this particular book, he is divorced and open to sexual relationships with women. He works and he does not work; he enjoys and at the same time dislikes being with friends. He enjoys and dislikes being alone. He likes and dislikes his own self. Whenever he looks at himself, it is more with emphasized disgust and irony than with self-confidence, but also with a certain degree of personal satisfaction and acceptance. The image he draws of himself is always quite raw, quite bitter and certainly far from any iconic glossy magazine model of male beauty. On one occasion he describes, in quite an expressive manner, his image reflected in the mirror:

‘I was horrified. I saw a swollen baby, ninety-kilos of weight. A larva with a shaven, rapidly blinking human head attached to it. I saw a bald creature insulting Mother Nature’s honest intentions.’

[‘Zděsil jsem se. Uviděl jsem napuchlé devadesátikilové nemluvně. Moučného červa s přimontovanou ostříhanou, rychle mrkající lidskou hlavou. Uviděl jsem jakousi lysou kreaturu, urážející poctivé záměry matky přírody.’] (KS: 209).

Or elsewhere, this time at a countryside pond where he goes for a swim, he says:

‘It came to my mind that, for the female part of the audience, I should pull my stomach back, at least a little bit. But I decided I would not give a damn. It was one of those moments when there was no point in pretending.’

[‘Napadlo mě, že bych s ohledem na dívčí část obecenstva mohl alespoň trochu zatáhnout břicho, ale hned jsem se na to vykašlal. Byl to jeden z momentů, kdy nestojí za to nic předstírat.’] (KS: 46-47)

When Beneš talks about his body, he uses the image of a ‘larva’ or, to be more literal, the image of a ‘flour-beetle’ (see below), a beast which he regards as something quite ugly, shapeless and fat; as something that is not pleasant to see. Even more, he says that he is

‘horrified’ by the image of himself he sees in the mirror. Nevertheless, one thing is the way Beneš describes himself (in a negative manner), the other is what he does with his perception of the self and how he confronts it and, as it seems, he does not confront it at all. Instead, he turns his head away in a gesture of a careless man:

‘Instead I pushed Radka back into her bed and once more jumped in that warm pool.’

[‘Raději jsem dostrkal Radku k posteli a skočil zase zpátky do té zahřáté tůně.’]

(KS: 209)

In the bed, Beneš behaves in a resigned manner, just like when he went swimming: instead of pulling his belly back, he decides to ignore it.

Beneš uses a mirror, water or other people’s eyes to reflect upon his own image but, no less importantly, also upon his own behaviour. After one of his drinking nights, he pulls out a kitchen knife and wants to stick it into his friend because he had vomited on his books. Immediately thereafter, his thoughts turn inside and against his own actions.

Suddenly, he reflects on what he has tried to do, criticizing himself for his selfish behaviour:

‘What a beast you are I told myself. Books are closer to you than a human being I told myself. Than a friend.’

[‘Co seš to za hovado, říkal jsem si. Knihy jsou ti bližší než člověk, říkal jsem si.

Než kamarád.’] (KS: 62-63)

Elsewhere, we learn about Beneš from a dialogue he leads with some of the people he encounters:

“But Honza, you mustn’t be alone. Loneliness is not good for you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because, when you’re alone, you are incapable of being happy. (…) Especially you! When you’re alone, you are almost invisible! When you’re alone, you hardly exist!”

[„Honza, ale. Ty nesmíš být sám. Samota pro tebe není dobrá.“ „Proč myslíš?“

„Protože když ty sám, nejsi schopen být šťastný.“ (...) „Speciálně ty! Když ty sám, ty nejsi vidět skoro! Když ty sám, tak skoro vůbec nejsi!“] (KS: 23)

To want to pull in one’s stomach and not to do it, to want to attack a friend for his careless behaviour and not to, and to seek out loneliness while he thinks he ‘should not’ – these are the two salient sides of Beneš’s personality, or at least those two aspects of his personality which he decided to tell us about. Whilst one side of Beneš’s personality acts instinctively, the other seems to follow external rules, and he is aware of both types of his behaviour.

Beneš wants to live in total, ‘natural’ freedom of human individuals, yet he knows that he lives in a world which is ruled by constraints and in which expects that individuals conform to certain rules imposed on them by society. This is the way he perceives it. He fights against the imposed rules – as a human being, as a man and, perhaps even more, as an employee of an advertisement agency and as a journalist who is in everyday contact with poster-like images of ‘ideal beauty’ and with the glossy magazine ‘propaganda’

demanding that he should have a perfect body and a perfect lifestyle.⁴⁴ Describing himself in a negative manner is perhaps his natural reaction to the world of proposed images and norms.

Beneš is a man in his middle years who sees himself as a person without any particular physical sex appeal for women. It is important to stress that this is his own entirely subjective view because, as we will see, women do not necessarily seem to care that his body is imperfect, they sleep with him anyway. Furthermore, his friends and other people seem to like his company too. No matter how rude he might sometimes be to them (or he thinks he is), his company is often sought out.

The fact that Beneš ‘presents himself’ as an unattractive man can be interpreted in two ways: as a pose he assumes in order to excuse his own inability to look ‘better’ (‘I am what I am and I cannot change it’ – due to his lack of confidence or laziness) or a pose he assumes in order to express a carefree attitude towards the shape of his own body and the shape of things in general (‘I am what I want to be so leave me alone’) whilst he thinks something else. Therefore, even on the level of what he feels and thinks, there are two contradicting powers that contribute to the shaping of Beneš’s life: his instinctive reactions and the impact of social rules. Beneš is playing with both of them. He listens to his instincts and suppresses them. He adapts to the social rules and rejects them.

These two factors also influence the attitude the narrator employs during his encounters with other people. He is angry with his friend who messed up his books but, at the same time, he admits that this attitude might be selfish and unfair. People around him comment on the conflict which is present in his behaviour. The Danish Arab, Husta, with whom Beneš conducts the dialogue on loneliness quoted above, points out to him that, when he is alone, he is not ‘capable of being happy’. Husta warns him that loneliness, which he perhaps ‘instinctively’ seeks, does not seem to have a positive impact on his personality. In Husta’s view, Beneš ‘should not’ be alone.

Where does this character’s split personality come from? What are the causes of his indecisiveness that leaves him always wandering between two opposite attitudes? Is it his

44 These are patterns that are more usually imposed on women. It was Mark Simpson (1968), an English journalist, writer and broadcaster specializing in popular culture, media and masculinity, who first pointed out the increasing popularity of featuring masculinity on the pages of popular ‘glossy’ magazines published in the 1990s. To describe this phenomenon, Simpson invented the term ‘the metrosexual man’. According to him, ‘the typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis – because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are’. Working as a journalist and in the advertising industry, Hakl’s narrator is fully aware of the rising popularity of masculine imagery in the media. Hence he reflects on it.

See more in http://www.marksimpson.com/pages/journalism/metrosexual_beckham.html.

lack of confidence that makes him question all he sees or does? (But he does see and do things.) Is it his lack of interest in other people’s views? (But he does listen to other people.) Is he afraid to confront his own desires? (But he does confront them.) Is he disgusted by the prevailing social norms? (But he does participate in social life.) To answer all these questions and relate the answers to the reality the narrative constructs, we need to learn more about Beneš’s world now.

1.3 Jan Beneš & Emil Hakl

‘In some cases, when the voice is strong or interesting enough, it may be that the narrator [him]self, rather than the story, is the centre of interest’, says Abbott in his introduction to the theory of the narrative (Abbott 2002: 65-66). This seems to be also the case in Hakl’s work. Konec světa is a story of one man and his perception of reality. It is this man’s voice that stands in the centre of the narrative and shapes all that comes into his mind and that comes out of it into a story of the world. That story is called Jan Beneš (or Honza Beneš in a variation of the name). In this sense, the first question is who this Jan Beneš is.

Beneš is the main character of Hakl’s work. He is the narrating ‘I’ of the text. From the external sources, we know that Jan Beneš is also the real name of the person who acts behind the mask of the pen-name, Emil Hakl, the undersigned author of the text. Jan Beneš-the character and the narrating ‘I’ of the text is approximately forty years old at the time when the story takes place; Jan Beneš, the writer of the text, was born in 1958. Jan Beneš, the character, lives in Prague; Jan Beneš, the writer, also does. Jan Beneš, the character and the writer, went through similar life and work experience. Both of them also write.⁴⁵

All these things suggest that Konec světa is inspired by Hakl’s own life or, at least, that the writer ‘uses’ real people, real places and events to create a fictive ‘real’ which is presented in the book. He uses his perception of real people (e. g. Jan Beneš), real places (e. g. Prague, the Žižkov and the Letná quarters) and real events to construct the fictive reality of his book. He uses his perception of the self in order to construct the character and the main narrator, Jan Beneš. Finally, he uses his perception of some features of his own self in order to construct the whole character of Jan Beneš. Nevertheless, how close to the real world Hakl’s fictive reality is and how much it reflects just the sheer joy of the writer’s playful imagination that is the subject of the reader’s construction. And this

45 For more comparisons, see the Introduction chapter.

depends on the reader’s knowledge of the ‘real’ and his ability to see through the signs the

‘real’ gives.

In general terms, Emil Hakl (alas Jan Beneš), the writer, no matter how convincing he may be, is only a vehicle through whom the message is channelled and passed to its audience. ‘[I]t is not man as conscious subject who thinks, acts or speaks, but the linguistic unconscious that determines his every thought, action and utterance’ (Burke 1992: 13). It is not a reality that Hakl imposes on us that we read about in his texts. It is reality itself that

‘uses’ Hakl as a means of communication between the outside world and us. Furthermore, it is not the writer who gives the text its meaning but the reader who does it in the process of his or her reading. ‘[The reader] is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted’ (Ibid: 27). The author reappears afterwards, ‘as a desire of the reader’s, a spectre spirited back into existence by the critic himself’ (Ibid: 30). If Burke is right, it is not Hakl’s subjective and conscious self that creates the text. It is the linguistic unconscious that determines the content of his writing.

The writer chooses the form in which the content will be passed to the readers. However, only the readers can give this content (and form) its meaning.

When I, as a reader, stated that the text of Konec světa was inspired by Jan Beneš’s own life, I was referring to the result of my reading experience of Hakl’s books and to my own knowledge (and interpretation) of the world. From my own experience, I knew that certain places existed, that certain events happened and certain people lived. But there were also other sources such as, for example, the articles and the interviews published in various periodicals that made me consider the autobiographical inspiration (not autobiography) of Hakl’s work.⁴⁶ It was from these articles and interviews I learnt about the writer’s perception of his own life and discovered certain similarities between the story of Konec svĕta and the story of Hakl’s (or Beneš’s) life. This information can sometimes be gleaned also from some of the works of Hakl’s literary friends. See, for instance, a text written by Václav Kahuda: Technologie dubnového večera (The Technology of an April Evening, 2000). In this work by Kahuda, Jan Beneš is one of the two main characters and here he also carries certain attributes which connect him with both the narrator and the writer of Hakl’s text.

In order to examine Hakl’s construction of reality, we need to analyze the identity of Jan Beneš, the character, because he is the main protagonist and the narrating ‘I’ of Hakl’s

46 See some articles on Emil Hakl and the interviews which are listed in the bibliographical section of this thesis.

texts and because it is his story that he shares with us, the readers. In order to understand his identity, we need to consider all the information available to us, no matter whether it has come from the text only or also from the external world (see the above debate on the autobiographical inspiration of Hakl’s fiction). Only a combination of both can give us the desired result.

2. ‘I’ in union with the world and in conflict with it (in relation to society)

2.1 ‘I’ in communication with others

When Beneš talks about himself, it is often the result of his communication with the people around him; with his friends, with his colleagues, with women or simply with random people whom he meets on the streets of Prague or in a pub. How Beneš presents himself varies. It depends on the situation in which he finds himself at the time and on the people he encounters. When he is with his closest friend, he says:

‘…it was indescribably pleasant to enjoy a beer with Pavlik and drink it with him in silence.’

[‘…bylo nepopsatelně příjemné jít s Pavlikem na pivo a mlčet.’] (KS: 5)

However, when talking about his interaction with strangers, he describes himself with irony:

‘I was rather good at impressing strangers with cheap tricks. It was one of the things I’ve always been best at.’

[‘Dojímat cizí lidi lacinými triky, to mi šlo odjakživa ze všeho nejlíp.’] (KS: 40)

and produces personal statements bordering on the verge of bitterness:

‘…yes, there have always been loonies around me; I have always attracted them though longed to be in the company of sensible, intelligent, well-read people with whom it would be possible to analyse serious, preferably philosophical, topics for hours. (…) I longed to be in the company of sensible, intelligent people but when I met them, they bored me and pissed me off so much that I always instinctively detached myself from them even before I managed to notice them.’

[‘…ano, magorů jsem kolem sebe měl vždycky dost; přitahoval jsem je, zatímco jsem toužil po rozumných, inteligentních, sečtělých lidech, se kterými by bylo možno hodiny a hodiny rozebírat vážná, pokud možno filozofická témata. (…) Toužil jsem po rozumných, inteligentních lidech, ale když jsem je potkal, nudili mě a srali tak a natolik, že jsem se pokaždé instinktivně odpoutal dřív, než jsem si jich vůbec stačil všimnout.’] (KS: 61)

These three examples represent three different assessments Beneš gives himself after being

‘confronted’ with other people. The meeting with Pavlik is unambiguously a positive experience. The statement refers to Beneš’s intimate friendship that does not need words or

any other form of communication. It is enough only to ‘drink’ ‘in silence’ and ‘be’. On the other hand, his random encounters with strangers make him talk, act and pretend. These encounters make him become a stranger to himself. They make him behave in a different manner – as a person who impresses other people ‘with cheap tricks’ rather than behaving naturally. They make him act against his own natural self, which desires an unpretentious life in peace and quiet and abhors pretence. But Jan Beneš finds it difficult to decide whether to be true to himself or to play-act in front of other people. He suffers from

any other form of communication. It is enough only to ‘drink’ ‘in silence’ and ‘be’. On the other hand, his random encounters with strangers make him talk, act and pretend. These encounters make him become a stranger to himself. They make him behave in a different manner – as a person who impresses other people ‘with cheap tricks’ rather than behaving naturally. They make him act against his own natural self, which desires an unpretentious life in peace and quiet and abhors pretence. But Jan Beneš finds it difficult to decide whether to be true to himself or to play-act in front of other people. He suffers from