Richard Weiner (Czech writer)
Encyclopedia
Richard Weiner was a Czech
journalist and writer. He is generally considered to be one of the most important Czech writers of the twentieth century, since he influenced many of his own and later generations of writers. Yet he is little known outside the Czech Republic
. Because of his enigmatic writings he has often been likened to Franz Kafka
, although mutual influences can be ruled out with near certainty. He has been called "the poet of anxiety", others spoke of him as "the Odd-man out" of Czech literature. His contemporary Karel Čapek
named him "the man of pain."
, South Bohemian Region
, Austria-Hungary
(now the Czech Republic
). His parents ran a distillery and confectionary and Richard, the oldest of five children, was destined to take over the family's business. He studied chemistry at the Technical University in Prague
and after graduating in 1906 with a degree in Chemical engineering
he went on to take further studies in Zurich
and Aachen
. In 1908 he served in the military and in 1909 he began working as a chemist in Pardubice
, Freising
and Allach (near Munich
).
In 1911, however, and after many sleepless nights, Weiner determined that he would rather try to make his living as an independent journalist and writer. The following year he moved to Paris
and started writing as a correspondent for the Czech daily newspaper Samostatnost. Beginning in 1913 he primarily worked for Lidové noviny
and published his first volume of poetry. While he was on vacation in Prague
in the summer of 1914 World War I
broke out. He was conscripted for military service and served at the Serbian front. In January 1915 he suffered a nervous breakdown and was discharged from the army. For the rest of the war he worked for various Prague newspapers and published three collections of short stories, among them Lítice (Furies, 1916), one of the first Czech books dealing with World War I.
In 1919 Weiner returned to Paris once again as a correspondent for Lidové noviny. He was to stay in Paris for nearly the rest of his life, only returning to Prague in 1936 when he had fallen seriously ill with stomach cancer
. He died in a Prague sanatorium on 3 January 1937. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery of his hometown. His tomb was wrecked in a pogrom shortly before the outbreak of World War II
.
of the early 20th century. At the same time he developed his own new poetics
under the influence of Charles Vildrac
and Georges Duhamel
. Whereas Weiner did not publish any literary works for several years after 1919, he started writing prose and poetry once again when he met a group of French surrealists
, including Roger Vailland
, René Daumal
and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
, who called themselves Le Grand Jeu (The Big Game). Between 1927 and 1933 Weiner published three more volumes of poetry, the prose work Lazebník (The Barber; 1929) and the novel Hra doopravdy (A Game for Real; 1933).
Weiner used literature as a means to explore the depths of being, while at the same time consciously reflecting the limits of language as a means of communication. Alfred Thomas argues: "Weiner's subtle fiction exposes – not the defunct status of language per se – but the fragmentation of a unified discourse subtended by a monistic, morally unambiguous truth." Referring to Weiner's homosexuality Thomas has also stressed, that Weiner's language is not emptied of meaning as some critics had insisted, but that his stories "explore the relationship between identity understood in terms of social morality and identity conceived in the subjective terms of sexuality."
With his prose Weiner reached an extreme degree of abstraction. Taking Hra doopravdy for an example, Walter Schamschula has pointed out that this novel consists of two distinct parts which are seemingly not connected to each other. But whereas the content of the first part might be accessible to the reader by viewing it as a dream, the plot is increasingly atomized in the second part. According to Schamschula critics have argued that a rational understanding of this novel is not possible, but he claims that it can nonetheless be accessed by recognizing its elaborate stage of abstraction. In particular, Schamschula stresses Weiner's commitment to the optical and to geometrical structures. Weiner's philosophy might be described as existentialism
.
In his lifetime, Weiner was already viewed as a literary outsider. His works did not sell at all and after his death he fell almost into oblivion. With the exception of a small volume by Jindřich Chalupecký, founder of the Group 42
, he became recognized as an important author only in the wake of the Prague spring
and particularly after 1989. So far he has not been translated into English.
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
journalist and writer. He is generally considered to be one of the most important Czech writers of the twentieth century, since he influenced many of his own and later generations of writers. Yet he is little known outside the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
. Because of his enigmatic writings he has often been likened to Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, although mutual influences can be ruled out with near certainty. He has been called "the poet of anxiety", others spoke of him as "the Odd-man out" of Czech literature. His contemporary Karel Čapek
Karel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
named him "the man of pain."
Life
Weiner was born in PísekPísek
Písek is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has a population of 29 909 .-About:Písek is usually called "The Athens of the South", although Athens is much more southerly, because it has many high schools and schools of higher education, e.g. the Film School in Písek...
, South Bohemian Region
South Bohemian Region
South Bohemian Region is an administrative unit of the Czech Republic, located mostly in the southern part of its historical land of Bohemia, with a small part in southwestern Moravia...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(now the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
). His parents ran a distillery and confectionary and Richard, the oldest of five children, was destined to take over the family's business. He studied chemistry at the Technical University in Prague
Czech Technical University in Prague
Czech Technical University in Prague is one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic, and the oldest institute of technology in Central Europe....
and after graduating in 1906 with a degree in Chemical engineering
Chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...
he went on to take further studies in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
and Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
. In 1908 he served in the military and in 1909 he began working as a chemist in Pardubice
Pardubice
Pardubice is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the river Elbe, 65 miles east of Prague. Pardubice has an antique centre square and old town, with many restaurants that stay open until late in the evening. There is an old Tower and a recently renovated Castle...
, Freising
Freising
Freising is a town in Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the district Freising. Total population 48,500.The city is located north of Munich at the Isar river, near the Munich International Airport...
and Allach (near Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
).
In 1911, however, and after many sleepless nights, Weiner determined that he would rather try to make his living as an independent journalist and writer. The following year he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and started writing as a correspondent for the Czech daily newspaper Samostatnost. Beginning in 1913 he primarily worked for Lidové noviny
Lidové noviny
Lidové noviny is a daily newspaper published in the Czech Republic. It is the oldest Czech daily. Its profile is nowadays a national news daily covering political, economic, cultural and scientific affairs, mostly with a centre-right, conservative view...
and published his first volume of poetry. While he was on vacation in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
in the summer of 1914 World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out. He was conscripted for military service and served at the Serbian front. In January 1915 he suffered a nervous breakdown and was discharged from the army. For the rest of the war he worked for various Prague newspapers and published three collections of short stories, among them Lítice (Furies, 1916), one of the first Czech books dealing with World War I.
In 1919 Weiner returned to Paris once again as a correspondent for Lidové noviny. He was to stay in Paris for nearly the rest of his life, only returning to Prague in 1936 when he had fallen seriously ill with stomach cancer
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
. He died in a Prague sanatorium on 3 January 1937. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery of his hometown. His tomb was wrecked in a pogrom shortly before the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Journalist
Weiner's journalistic work focused on French and particularly Parisian politics and culture, but covered everyday life and sensational crimes as well. He reviewed plays, literature, and exhibitions and even wrote a regular column on fashion under a female pseudonym. His style has been described as "impressionist" by contemporaries. For this reason his work may be difficult to understand now, because Weiner presupposed familiarity with the news of his day. "But is not his journalistic writing of that time a wonderful source of study of this time-period?" his friend and fellow correspondent Gustav Winter asked in his obituary of 1937. "This time period with its special fragrance Weiner perceived and interpreted however more by an intuition than hard study. He was proud of it - and rightly so." In her study of Weiner's work, Marie Langerová has characterized Weiner's quest as a journalist as that of a "destroyer of national myths".Writer
Weiner's literary work is generally divided into two distinct phases. His first poems and short stories appear to be influenced by the modernist literatureModernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
of the early 20th century. At the same time he developed his own new poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
under the influence of Charles Vildrac
Charles Vildrac
Charles Vildrac , born "Charles Messager", was a French playwright and poet.Born in Paris, Vildrac's first poems were written when he was a teenager in the 1890s. In 1901 he published Le Verlibrisme, a defense of traditional verse...
and Georges Duhamel
Georges Duhamel
Georges Duhamel , was a French author, born in Paris. Duhamel trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French Army. In 1920, he published Confession de minuit , the first of a series featuring the anti-hero Salavin...
. Whereas Weiner did not publish any literary works for several years after 1919, he started writing prose and poetry once again when he met a group of French surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, including Roger Vailland
Roger Vailland
Roger Vailland was a French novelist, essayist, and screenwriter.Vailland's novels include Drôle de jeu , Les mauvais coups , Un jeune homme seul , 325 000 francs , and La loi , winner of the Prix Goncourt...
, René Daumal
René Daumal
René Daumal was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France....
and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
Roger Gilbert-Lecomte was a French avant-garde poet and co-founder of the artistic group and magazine Le Grand Jeu. The group, associated with surrealists, was "excommunicated" from the movement by André Breton...
, who called themselves Le Grand Jeu (The Big Game). Between 1927 and 1933 Weiner published three more volumes of poetry, the prose work Lazebník (The Barber; 1929) and the novel Hra doopravdy (A Game for Real; 1933).
Weiner used literature as a means to explore the depths of being, while at the same time consciously reflecting the limits of language as a means of communication. Alfred Thomas argues: "Weiner's subtle fiction exposes – not the defunct status of language per se – but the fragmentation of a unified discourse subtended by a monistic, morally unambiguous truth." Referring to Weiner's homosexuality Thomas has also stressed, that Weiner's language is not emptied of meaning as some critics had insisted, but that his stories "explore the relationship between identity understood in terms of social morality and identity conceived in the subjective terms of sexuality."
With his prose Weiner reached an extreme degree of abstraction. Taking Hra doopravdy for an example, Walter Schamschula has pointed out that this novel consists of two distinct parts which are seemingly not connected to each other. But whereas the content of the first part might be accessible to the reader by viewing it as a dream, the plot is increasingly atomized in the second part. According to Schamschula critics have argued that a rational understanding of this novel is not possible, but he claims that it can nonetheless be accessed by recognizing its elaborate stage of abstraction. In particular, Schamschula stresses Weiner's commitment to the optical and to geometrical structures. Weiner's philosophy might be described as existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
.
In his lifetime, Weiner was already viewed as a literary outsider. His works did not sell at all and after his death he fell almost into oblivion. With the exception of a small volume by Jindřich Chalupecký, founder of the Group 42
Group 42
Group 42 was a Czech artistic group officially established in 1942 . The group's activity ceased in 1948, but its influence on Czech literature and Czech art was still evident in further years....
, he became recognized as an important author only in the wake of the Prague spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
and particularly after 1989. So far he has not been translated into English.
Works
- Netečný divák a jiné prósy. Fr. Borový, V Praze 1917.
- Rozcestí. Básně. Fr. Borový, V Praze 1918.
- Lítice. 2nd edition, Praha 1928.
- Mnoho nocí. Básně. Vydal Ot. Štorch-Marien, Praha 1928.
- Hra doopravdy. New edition, Mladá Fronta, Praha 1967.
- Lazebník Hra doopravdy. Odeon, Praha 1974.
- Sluncem svržený sok. Československý spisovatel, Praha 1989, ISBN 8020200924.
- Škleb. ARGO, Praha 1993, ISBN 8085794039.
- Spisy. (Works). 5 Vols., ed. by Zina Trochová. Torst, Praha 1996ff.
External links
- Broadcast Richard Weiner: a European mind
- Jonathan Bolton: Weiner, Richard. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. (11 July 2011).
- Literatur im Kontext – Richard Weiner