Překlady

Představovat na tomto místě Rolanda Bartha je, pevně doufám, zbytečné. V několika následujících poznámkách se tedy soustředíme na Barthovu knihu Fragmenty milostného diskurzu (Fragments d’un discours amoureux), z níž předkládáme krátkou ukázku. I zde se však vkrádá pochybnost – není marné dodávat něco ke knize, kterou sám autor opatřil instruktivní předmluvou „Jak je udělána tato kniha“? Jsou tu nicméně témata, ke kterým se patří připojit několik vysvětlivek.

A wall plastered with cinema and theatre programmes proclaimed both the dire and the enjoyable of what Sunday had to offer. A huge portrait of some author announced his recently published novel, and a palette and sprig of laurel a recently opened exhibition.

Josef Čapek is less brilliant, less the virtuoso, less extrovert than the other Čapek Dioscurus. It might sound paradoxical, but Josef Čapek – painter, man of the world of shapes and colours, space, the external – is infinitely more introverted. And his art! This introversion made a thinker of Josef Čapek. But not a thinker in any professional sense. After reading all the books and essays in which Čapek immerses himself deepest in those issues that matter to him most we will not hesitate to deny him the title of philosopher.

1.
The carriage jolted to a halt at Staré Bělidlo. Grandmother, knocked around by the ride, wobbles out to hug Tereza.

Mr. Prošek tries to speak Czech.

The grandchildren assault grandmother’s coat pockets: a marzipan doll and gingerbread horses. The lambkins munch, chomp at their treats. Once while grandmother was pitting little Adéla to sleep at the piano and faithful May kittens were clawing at one of the large dogs in the courtyard, the grandchildren pried open her decorated wood chest with a crucifix.

I

Pokud o ženě není možno říci, čím je, možná by tomu bylo jinak v případě matky, neboť se jedná o jedinou funkci „jiného pohlaví“, které můžeme s jistotou připsat existenci. Nicméně i zde zabředáme do určitého. – Především žijeme v civilizaci, v níž je posvěcené (náboženské nebo laické) zobrazení ženství vstřebáno do mateřství.

Giovanni Bellini: 1430?–1516

The text was translated within the seminar Introduction into Czech Literature at Charles University

I
Through the Gothic stained-glass window of the château shines the moon. Flashes of variegated light fall onto the mosaic floor, glaze the beautiful foliage of the tall rubber plants standing alongside the walls, reflect off the parapets covered with garnet-red samite intertwined with silver.

“Philosophy of love in Božena Němcová? Nonsense!” is what a literary historian, as well as a historian of philosophy, would say. Němcová was a spontaneous and supreme writer of belles-lettres. Working with precisely defined concepts and rational argumentation, moreover in the spirit of some sort of scholastic doctrine, was completely alien to her. Nevertheless in her life as in her works, Němcová touched upon several general questions, especially of a moral and social nature. Qualified answers to these have up to now been usurped by religious faith and secular wisdom.