open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/39237

Danilo Kiš and Central Europe : A Reading of His Incomplete Story "Apatrid"

日本語

2008

北海道大学スラブ研究センター

Slavic Studies

55

61-90

In 1979 Danilo Kiš left Belgrade and settled in Paris. Unlike Milan Kundera who was forced to move out of his country because he was deprived of his right to participate in public life, Kiš migrated to France of his own free will. His "voluntary exile" or "Joyce-like exile," was not only inspired by his quest for literature, but also by what he termed his "fate as a wandering Jew." This paper focuses on Kiš' "exile," by analyzing his unpublished work "The Apatrid" (1980), and by examining how his understanding of the concept of "Central Europe" evolved. "The Apatrid" is based on the life of Ödön von Horváth, a dramatist who was born in 1901 in Fiume and died 1938 in Paris, and called himself "a typical Austro-Hungarian of mixed-blood." Kiš became interested in this person, probably due to the similarities in their background and thought. However, in order to keep the "appropriate distance" from the protagonist, Kiš renamed the hero of his novel to Német, and tried to create a story that is something between a documentary and a fiction, this being his continuous literary task. This superimposition of fiction onto the life of a real individual can be seen in the titles of the books the protagonist is writing: "A Man without Homeland" and "Goodbye, Europe." The former is an expression synonymous with "The Apatrid," while the latter is the title of an unfinished autobiographical novel by Horváth. In "The Apatrid," Kiš shared with Horváth the adoration for Ady Endre, a famous Hungarian poet, who once lived in Paris, the city where Horváth, met his destiny: only four days after his arrival to Paris, Horváth (Német) dies in an accident, hit on the head by a falling tree branch. Little did Kiš know that he himself would achieve a symbolic death in Paris. It is clear that Horváth (Német) possessed the properties of a "Central European" writer. However, Kiš did not use that or any other similar term in this work. His notion of "Central Europe," though, may have changed during his life. Based on this assumption, the paper also analyzes the use of the word "Central Europe" or "Central European" and the like in his novels, essays and interviews. The term first appears in Garden, ashes (1965), Kiš' third fiction novel, as follows: "the poor shopkeepers and grain dealers of central Europe and the Balkans." In The Hourglass (1972), it appears not only in that form, but also in the phrase: "Central European Time." In A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (1976), the term appears only once as an adjective for a small town in Hungary, and in The Encyclopedia of the Dead (1983) only twice in the phrase "Central European Jewish merchant." It is evident from the narratives that Kiš used the word "Central Europe" in his fiction as a geographic term signifying a region and the Jews who lived in it. The same is true for his essays in the 1970s such as The Anatomy Lesson (1978), as well as his interviews. It was after moving to Paris that Kiš started to use the term to denote the literary entity to which he belonged. His motive was to promote the Central European literature as a whole, especially to the West. In his essay "Variations on Central European Themes" (1986), Kiš analyzed "Central Europe" mainly from three aspects; the definition of the term, the relations between the region and its Jewish community, and exile. After admitting the existence of numerous differences, negative aspects and contradictions within Central Europe, Kiš points out the common, transnational traits in it, which were, in his opinion, largely created due to the influence of its Jewish community. He then goes on to define himself as one of Central European writers who are aware of form "as a bulwark against the mayhem of barbarism and the irrational caprice of instinct." On the basis of these analyses, the paper concludes that Kiš' "exile" was a method to overcome attachment to both Yugoslavia and Paris. While struggling with his feelings of nostalgia and attachment, he discovered his identity in the ideal of "Central Europe" which lies between Belgrade and Paris. It can therefore be said that Kiš, who maintained a distance from the real world, found his place of belonging in the idealistic world of thought built by his powerful imagination. The cost of his "Joyce-like exile" was, however, high -- he could not continue writing novels. The Encyclopedia of the Dead was the last novel to be published by Kiš himself. "The Apatrid" itself was kept in his chest drawer incomplete. However, as a new attempt, Kiš turned to a different genre: a dialogical autobiography. This was an attempt to represent and recreate the bare facts about himself and his family that he had never presented before. This was also his clear sign that a dark age was approaching again, an age that forced him to tackle with his own autobiography.

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0562-6579

AN0012574X