By Patrik Ouredník, Gerald Turner
Patrik Ouredník's first novel to be translated into English is a special model of the historical past of the 20th century.Told in an off-the-cuff, enthralling voice, Ouredník represents the 20th century in all its contradictions and grand illusions, demonstrating that not anything great has replaced among 1900 and 1999—humanity continues to be longing for the long run and nonetheless mired in age-old conflicts. As he demonstrates that not anything should be decreased to a unmarried, precise standpoint, Ouredník mixes tough evidence and idiosyncratic observations, highlighting the horror and absurdity of the 20th century and the additional absurdity of trying to narrate this historical past.
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Additional resources for Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (Eastern European Literature)
Sample text
I shall have to raise my consciousness of life outside to so high a point that it would amount to a crime against my personal life. as for my prior profound morality, for me to discover that I am as crudely alive as that bare light that I learned of yesterday, as for that morality of mine, the harsh glory of being alive is horror itself. I lived before of a humanized world; did the simply alive destroy the morality that I had then? A world wholly alive has a Hellish power. A world wholly alive has a Hellish power.
A paradise that I don't want! During the time I'm writing and speaking, I'm going to have to pretend that someone is holding my hand. Oh, at least at the beginning . . only at the beginning. As soon as I can do without it, I'll go on alone. even if I can't picture your face and your eyes and your mouth. But even though it is cut off from a body, this hand doesn't scare me. Its creation comes from an idea of love such that it is as if the hand were really attached to a body, and if I don't see it it's because I am unable to love more.
My foresight closed the world to me. Until, for a few hours, I stopped. And, my God, I got what I didn't want. I had always imagined that discovery would be fertile and humid, like river valleys. I never thought it would be the immense disencounter that it was. Is my sacrifice for continuing to be human just forgetting? I shall now be able to recognize in the common faces of some people that. . that they have forgotten. And that they no longer know that they have forgotten what they have forgotten.