Bogumil Hrabal: biography, personal life, bibliography, cause and date of death

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Bogumil Hrabal is a popular Czech poet and prose writer. In 1994 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Among his other significant awards, the Oscar should be noted, which was awarded to the film based on his novel. This is Jiri Menzel's drama "Trains under close supervision". Hrabal wrote the script for it. He also received many other literary awards and prizes not only at home, but also abroad. In 1996, he was awarded the state award of the Czech Republic "For Merit".

Childhood and youth

Bogumil Hrabal was born in the Czech town of Brno. The city at that time was on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, because it was born in 1914, just a few months before the start of the First World War.

At the age of 5 Bogumil Hrabal together with his parentsmoved to the city of Nymburk, not far from Prague. There, his stepfather got a job as director of a brewery.

In 1935, the future writer enters the law faculty of Charles University.

Changing professions

When World War II began, Bohumil Hrabal worked as a train station attendant and telegraph operator.

After the victory over fascism, he changed many professions until he found his calling. During this time, he managed to visit a traveling salesman, an insurance agent. Like many other professions, this is directly reflected in his work. For example, in the 50s, for seven years, Hrabal worked as a waste paper packer and stagehand in the theater, although he was quite far from creativity until a certain time.

Creativity

In his youth, Bohumil Hrabal had unremarkable poetic experiences, after which he did not return to literature at all for a long time. His first major works were created only in the fourth decade of his life. It was then that significant changes began to occur in the biography of Bohumil Hrabal, he finally sat down at his desk.

It is worth noting that the writer's works did not immediately find recognition from the public, they were published only in the 60s. Moreover, some books were actually banned for quite a long time. For example, the novel "I served the English king".

In the 60s, a realpopularity, he becomes the most popular contemporary writer in Czechoslovakia. In 1965, one of his most recognizable works was published - the novel "Special Purpose Trains", in which he describes the resistance of the Czechs to the fascist invaders with his usual rude humor.

The biographers of the hero of our article note that the "German factor" played a certain role in his life. From his youth, he was closely associated with this environment, inspired by many German literary sources and philosophical ideas. Even his wife was a German named Elishka Plevova.

Death

Hrabal died in February 1997 at the age of 82. He died in the hospital after leaning out from the fifth floor to feed pigeons. As a result of careless movement, he fell onto the pavement.

Some researchers of his fate and work believe that this could have been suicide, since such a fall is described in detail in several of his works at once.

After his death, the writer was cremated. The urn with the ashes was buried in a family vault in a rural cemetery near Prague.

Special Trains

The first notable novel by Bohumil Hrabal was published in 1963. It was called "Pearl at the Bottom". It was followed by "Dance Lessons for Senior and Advanced Students", and then his first big success - "Special Purpose Trains".

In 1968, the drama "Trains under scrutinyObservation "won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Vaclav Neckarz, Josef Somr, Jitka Skoffin and Vlastimil Brodsky played the leading roles in this tape. Among the nominees that year were also Francisco Rovira Beleta's Spanish film "Witch Love", Japanese painting by Noboru Nakamura "Portrait of Chieko", Yugoslav drama by Alexander Petrovich "Feathers", French drama by Claude Lelouch "To live to live".

The central character of this work is a teenager named Milos Grma, who is doing an internship at a tiny railway station near Milovice. He is proud of the new form, trying to match his older comrades in everything, who live an adult life unknown to him.

Milos loves the young conductor Masha. After a date, they spend the night together, but due to their lack of experience, they fail at their first intimacy.

Meanwhile, the war is coming to an end. Partisans are watching the German trains passing through the station. They are counting on the help of the station staff. Miloš brings explosives to the ammo truck, but is killed when the guards spot him.

I served the King of England

The next high-profile novel by Hrabal was a work called "I served the English king." For political reasons, this book was banned for a long time. It was written in 1971 and has been released illegally several times. her firstofficial publication took place only after the fall of the socialist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

The narration in Hrabal's novel "I Served the King of England" in its genre is as close as possible to confession. The main character, Jan Diete, works as a waiter. His main dream and goal in life is to grow up in the eyes of others and get rich. However, at the same time, he has to cope with an inferiority complex, since he was small from birth, and besides, he was brought up in the status of an illegitimate one.

In 2006, Jiri Menzel made a comedy of the same name based on this novel. Ivan Byrnev, Aldridge Kaiser, Yuliya Jench, Marian Labuda and Milan Lasica starred in the film.

Waiter Story

At the very beginning, the reader is introduced to the former owner of the hotel, Jan Diethe, who returned after spending a decade and a half in prison. He comes to his small homeland in the Sudetes, where he settles in one of the houses, forcedly abandoned by the settlers. In peace and quiet, he rethinks his whole life, remembering his youth, which he spent in constant pursuit of fame and fortune.

He started his path to success in small retail. Becoming a waiter, he began to change, with the help of a new friend, a small pub for a prestigious restaurant. Having married an ethnic German woman, he manages to find a job even after the German occupation. At the end of the war, his wife Lisa brings a collection of postage stamps, which she collected from the homes of evicted Jews.

The sale of these stamps allows the main character to turn into a realmillionaire, even buy out the hotel where he worked. However, the price of this resounding success is too high. Liza, trying to save the stamps during the bombing, dies. Soon Dite himself is arrested. This is followed by the nationalization of property by the Czechoslovak government, the communist authorities, who come to power shortly after the end of World War II.

The most famous novel

The most famous work of the Czech writer is a philosophical novel called "Too noisy loneliness". Bogumil Hrabal wrote it by 1976, but the book was first published only in 1989. This again happened for political reasons, as the Czech government heavily censored the book.

This book by Bohumil Hrabal begins with an epigraph from Goethe, which once again speaks of the proximity of German culture to the Czech classic. It is noteworthy that this novel of the hero of our article was filmed. And twice: first in 1996, and then in 2007 in the form of a puppet cartoon directed by American Genevieve Anderson.

Storyline

Summary of "Too noisy loneliness" by Hrabal will allow you to get a full impression of this novel.

The whole book is an internal monologue that unfolds in the soul of the protagonist. Gantya works as a paper wrapper. He is alone, spending three and a half decades at the press machine, pressing whole books into briquettes.circulations. Hrabal in "Too noisy loneliness" notes that the main character has become wise during this time, although he himself did not want to. To pass the time at work, he sews together books that he presses.

When the reader is introduced to the central character of Hrabal's Too Noisy Loneliness, Ganta is only five years away from retirement. He decides to take the press with him to continue working at home, only giving out just one book a day. Regularly, he begins to arrange exhibitions of finished products.

In the end of the work, the boss puts instead of Ganti the workers who arrived from the advanced brigade of socialist labor. They demonstrate that they are able to perform the duties of the protagonist several times faster and more efficiently. Gantya immediately realizes that he was left out of work, useless to anyone. Saddened, he commits suicide by lying under his own press machine.

Final versions

It is noteworthy that in the first versions of the novel, the author left the hero alive. At the very end, he woke up on a park bench, realizing that in reality it was only a dream.

Another interesting point: the title of Bohumil Hrabal's book is a quote from it. In one of the scenes, the protagonist sees Lao Tzu and Jesus Christ. He describes how he begins to climb the stairs, but only walks on three limbs, as he becomes very dizzy from the too noisy loneliness surrounding him.

Hrabal's Novels

Total hero of our article wasseveral dozen bright and notable novels have been written, many of which have been translated into Russian, and some have been filmed.

Among his works, which we have not yet mentioned, are the novels "Snowdrop Holidays", "Beautiful Moments of Sadness", "Millions of Harlequin", "Weddings at Home", "Clearings", "Magic Flute", "The Rose Cavalier".

From the book "Life Without a Tuxedo" by Bohumil Hrabal, which was published in 1986, we learn many details about the life of the author himself. This is largely an autobiographical work, which he begins with memories of a real school in Nymburk, where he spent his childhood, studied science, and made his first friends. The Czech classic recalls that for him it was a "shining castle" that turned into a wall of fear and weeping, a place filled with a lot of experiences, but at the same time, amazing and hard to explain joy.

In 1994, Hrabal was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, he failed to win the award. The Nobel Committee awarded it to Japanese humanist writer Kenzaburo Oe for creating an imaginary world in which myth and reality combine to give a complete impression of a disturbing picture of contemporary human misery. At least that's what the rationale behind the award sounds like.

It is noteworthy that Hrabal had a chance to become only the second Czech writer in the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature to be awarded this award. Prior to this, only the poet became a laureateYaroslav Seifert. He received a prestigious award in 1984 for demonstrating human versatility and a proud independent spirit in his work.