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賯胤丕乇丕鬲 鬲丨鬲 丕賱丨乇丕爻丞 丕賱賲卮丿丿丞
乇賵丕賷丞 亘賵賴賵賲賷賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱 賴匕賴貙 賵丕賱匕賷 賷賯賵賱 毓賳賴丕 賲賷賱丕賳 賰賵賳丿賷乇丕: "賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 兀賰孬乇 丕賱鬲噩爻賷丿丕鬲 兀氐丕賱丞 賱賲丿賷賳丞 亘乇丕睾 丕賱爻丨乇賷丞貙 丕鬲丨丕丿 乇丕卅毓 亘賷賳 丕賱賮賰丕賴丞 丕賱賵丕賯毓賷丞 賵亘賷賳 丕賱禺賷丕賱 丕賱亘丕乇賵賰賷 賵賲丕 賷賲賷夭賴丕 賴賷 賯丿乇丞 賴乇丕亘丕賱 毓賱賶 丕賱賮乇丨"賭 鬲噩爻丿 (賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞) 丕賱氐賵乇丞 丕賱賲鬲賯賳丞 賵丕賱卮丕毓乇賷丞 賱賭 賲賷賱賵卮 賴乇賲丕貙 丕賱氐亘賷 丕賱禺噩賵賱 丕賱匕賷 亘丿兀 賷鬲賲乇賳 丨丿賷孬丕 賱賱毓賲賱 賱賲氐賱丨丞 丕賱爻賰賰 丕賱丨丿賷丿賷丞 賮賷 廿丨丿賶 賲丨胤丕鬲 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲貙 賷毓夭賱 賳賮爻賴 亘禺賷丕賱賴 囟丿 丕賱賵丕賯毓 丕賱賲賱賷亍 亘丕賱賯爻賵丞 賵丕賱丨夭賳貙 賵賷噩丿 賲鬲毓鬲賴 亘賲乇丕賯亘丞 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲 丕賱鬲賷 鬲兀鬲賷 賵鬲匕賴亘 賵賲毓賴丕 鬲兀鬲賷 賵鬲匕賴亘 丕賱兀賷丕賲. 廿賱賶 兀賳 賷亘丿兀 卮賰賹 睾乇賷亘 賷賳賲賵 賮賷 丿丕禺賱 賴乇賲丕貙 亘兀賳賴 賴賵 丕賱賲乇丕賯賻亘貙 賵賲毓賴 鬲賳賲賵 賲禺丕賵賮賴 賲賳 丕賱毓噩夭 丕賱噩賳爻賷. 鬲爻賷胤乇 賴匕賴 丕賱賲禺丕賵賮 毓賱賶 賴乇賲丕 賱鬲丿賮毓賴 廿賱賶 丕賱丨丕噩丞 賱鬲兀賰賷丿 乇噩賵賱鬲賴貙 賱賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 丨丕賱丞 賲賳 賯賵丞 丕賱廿乇丕丿丞 賵丕賱鬲氐賲賷賲 賱賲 賳卮賴丿 賱賴丕 賲孬賷賱丕 賲賳 賯亘賱. 賵賴丕 賴賵 賷賵丕噩賴 亘亘爻丕賱丞 賯胤丕乇丕 賰丕賲賱丕賸 賲賳 丕賱賳丕夭賷賷賳.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
200 people are currently reading
9422 people want to read
About the author
Bohumil Hrabal
193听books1,260听followersBorn in Brno-沤idenice, Moravia, he lived briefly in Poln谩, but was raised in the Nymburk brewery as the manager's stepson.
Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.
He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladim铆r Boudn铆k in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.
His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("ko膷enky").
He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlat茅ho tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met the Czech President V谩clav Havel, the American President Bill Clinton and the then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on January 11th, 1994.
Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to the objections of the authorities, including The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (M臎ste膷ko, kde se zastavil 膷as) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglick茅ho kr谩le).
He died when he fell from a fifth floor hospital where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.
He was buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Hradi拧tko. In the same grave his mother "Mary拧ka", step father "Francin", uncle "Pepin", wife "Pipsi" and brother "Sl谩vek" were buried.
He wrote with an expressive, highly visual style, often using long sentences; in fact his work Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964) (Tane膷n铆 hodiny pro star拧铆 a pokro膷il茅) is made up of just one sentence. Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are also a recurrent theme.
Along with Jaroslav Ha拧ek, Karel 膶apek, and Milan Kundera - who were also imaginative and amusing satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages.
Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.
He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladim铆r Boudn铆k in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.
His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("ko膷enky").
He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlat茅ho tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met the Czech President V谩clav Havel, the American President Bill Clinton and the then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on January 11th, 1994.
Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to the objections of the authorities, including The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (M臎ste膷ko, kde se zastavil 膷as) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglick茅ho kr谩le).
He died when he fell from a fifth floor hospital where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.
He was buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Hradi拧tko. In the same grave his mother "Mary拧ka", step father "Francin", uncle "Pepin", wife "Pipsi" and brother "Sl谩vek" were buried.
He wrote with an expressive, highly visual style, often using long sentences; in fact his work Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964) (Tane膷n铆 hodiny pro star拧铆 a pokro膷il茅) is made up of just one sentence. Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are also a recurrent theme.
Along with Jaroslav Ha拧ek, Karel 膶apek, and Milan Kundera - who were also imaginative and amusing satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages.
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September 2, 2024
TRENI ACUTAMENTE OSSERVATI
Nella stazioncina il capostazione aspetta di essere promosso ispettore, ha la divisa nuova gi脿 pronta nell鈥檃rmadio, e alleva colombi: prima della guerra allevava i bagadesi di Norimberga, ma quando i tedeschi invadono la Polonia, li strozza tutti e li sostituisce con altri, le linci polacche.
I treni passano da est a ovest e da ovest a est, con vagoni a volte pieni di soldati e infermiere, a volte crivellati di pallottole, a volte pieni di animali ridotti alla fame e disidratati immersi tra compagni gi脿 cadaveri.
Il capomanovra a mezzanotte ha sollevato la gonna della telegrafista, l鈥檋a fatta stendere sul tavolo, le ha sfilato le mutandine e le ha stampato sul sedere tutti i timbri, almeno la met脿 dei quali in lingua tedesca.
Lei, adesso tutta timbrata, sembra pi霉 bella di prima e pensa di darsi al cinema.
Lui subisce un processo per il suo gesto oltraggioso e decide di far saltare in aria un convoglio.
Con l鈥檃iuto di Milos, giovane apprendista manovratore, ma non cos矛 giovane da non poter conoscere l鈥檃more di Masa e da non poter conoscere la morte: ma cos矛 giovane da soffrire di eiaculazione precoce, cos矛 giovane da perdere la verginit脿 con un鈥檃rtista di circo, cos矛 giovane da arrampicarsi fin dove non c'猫 pi霉 ritorno.
E, alla fine, la scoperta!
La scoperta che anche i tedeschi sono umani, pi霉 umani dei capretti, di tutti gli animali e ... di qualunque cosa subiva una disgrazia...
Sembra una favola, un bel racconto, divertente e un po鈥� folle: e invece, parla della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, dell鈥檕ccupazione nazista della Cecoslovacchia.
Parla dell鈥檕rrore - ma in un altro modo.
Nel modo e nella forma dei grandi.
Tutte le immagini sono tratte dal film omonimo del 1966 diretto da Jir铆 Menzel.
Nella stazioncina il capostazione aspetta di essere promosso ispettore, ha la divisa nuova gi脿 pronta nell鈥檃rmadio, e alleva colombi: prima della guerra allevava i bagadesi di Norimberga, ma quando i tedeschi invadono la Polonia, li strozza tutti e li sostituisce con altri, le linci polacche.
I treni passano da est a ovest e da ovest a est, con vagoni a volte pieni di soldati e infermiere, a volte crivellati di pallottole, a volte pieni di animali ridotti alla fame e disidratati immersi tra compagni gi脿 cadaveri.
Il capomanovra a mezzanotte ha sollevato la gonna della telegrafista, l鈥檋a fatta stendere sul tavolo, le ha sfilato le mutandine e le ha stampato sul sedere tutti i timbri, almeno la met脿 dei quali in lingua tedesca.
Lei, adesso tutta timbrata, sembra pi霉 bella di prima e pensa di darsi al cinema.
Lui subisce un processo per il suo gesto oltraggioso e decide di far saltare in aria un convoglio.
Con l鈥檃iuto di Milos, giovane apprendista manovratore, ma non cos矛 giovane da non poter conoscere l鈥檃more di Masa e da non poter conoscere la morte: ma cos矛 giovane da soffrire di eiaculazione precoce, cos矛 giovane da perdere la verginit脿 con un鈥檃rtista di circo, cos矛 giovane da arrampicarsi fin dove non c'猫 pi霉 ritorno.
E, alla fine, la scoperta!
La scoperta che anche i tedeschi sono umani, pi霉 umani dei capretti, di tutti gli animali e ... di qualunque cosa subiva una disgrazia...
Sembra una favola, un bel racconto, divertente e un po鈥� folle: e invece, parla della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, dell鈥檕ccupazione nazista della Cecoslovacchia.
Parla dell鈥檕rrore - ma in un altro modo.
Nel modo e nella forma dei grandi.
Tutte le immagini sono tratte dal film omonimo del 1966 diretto da Jir铆 Menzel.
June 25, 2017
A couple of months ago, I bought this slim volume at the Globe Bookstore and Cafe in Prague on the last afternoon of a 9-day school tour with my 15-year old daughter and several of her classmates. We had perhaps 45 minutes in which to identify purchases, enjoy beverages, split a salad, and read passages to each other from the books we selected. At the time, I shared with her portions of one of the other books I bought, and saved this one until now. I will remember that afternoon, the Globe and the time we spent in each other's company in Prague for some time to come.
Closely Observed Trains takes place in Czechoslovakia near the end of WWII. First published in 1965 and one of Hrabal's best known novels, it is part coming-of-age, part war-is-hell, part fantastic. The first 80 pages reminded me of many, unremembered and unremarkable classics I've read through the years. The last five pages are unforgettable. This book is a 4-star read for me, in part, because, on every page, I recalled our time together in Prague and was grateful again for the opportunity to walk its streets, begin to appreciate its rich history and still recent experience of war and occupation, and to spend that time with my daughter. I will look for more Hrabal novels.
Closely Observed Trains takes place in Czechoslovakia near the end of WWII. First published in 1965 and one of Hrabal's best known novels, it is part coming-of-age, part war-is-hell, part fantastic. The first 80 pages reminded me of many, unremembered and unremarkable classics I've read through the years. The last five pages are unforgettable. This book is a 4-star read for me, in part, because, on every page, I recalled our time together in Prague and was grateful again for the opportunity to walk its streets, begin to appreciate its rich history and still recent experience of war and occupation, and to spend that time with my daughter. I will look for more Hrabal novels.
July 10, 2021
The 鈥榞reat鈥� acts of ours
transformed us
to something else
otherwise
unknown, to us, then
becomes, our identity, now.
The darkness
our new attribute.
Ghosts of ourselves
we became
perhaps like
walking deaths
died somewhere long back
in our hearts and souls.
link:
I came to know about Bohumil Hrabal only last year through reading his outstandingly dense, haunting but comic book- Too Loud a Solitude, perhaps that鈥檚 the way to describe his fiction since I see that my second brush with his prose brings out the similar feelings, if not the same. Humanity has been struggling with numerous vagaries of existence since the outbreak of civilization, some of the most profound oddities could be wars, holocausts, massacres, and others. In this little gem from the Czech master, we are thrown into the tumultuous days of World War II.
War, as we know, may affect humanity in unprecedented, unusual, unsettling, and undetermined ways; human beings may be ripped off what is considered as humanity, for it might come down to the basic survival instinct which is common among all animals per se. The common men, who otherwise encompass all good and evil, what underlines humanity, may get transformed into killing machines, with their emotions giving way to bear our condemned existence at any cost, so may unassumed affairs, unsaid conversations, unexplored avenues remain suspended in the hell of nothingness forever to be burned there.
How much margin we have between life and death there, I guess, both seem to be hanging through a delicate thread which may throw either of them at the disposal of humanity, within splits of a second? How could such death be absorbed, for, one does not get a chance for the realization? And it is not that they are already transformed into walking deaths, having died somewhere long ago, in their souls? The 鈥榞reat鈥� acts such as wars seem to beset the entire lives of men as these keep on haunting humanity even after the wars, for the wounds of such acts may stab you deep down all the way to your soul, recuperation from those mutilations does not come easy.
He was a man, too, like me, or like Mr Hubicka, like us he hadn鈥檛 any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other and brought each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other, and found a lot to talk about.
link:
Milos Hrma is a reticent young man who tries to assume his existence amidst the harrowing and bombing settings of WWII wherein Germans are losing their control over Czechoslovakia. The story starts with wry and acerbic humor as we find the remains of a German plane hovering over the landscape. However, the reader is abruptly taken off guard and the humor is superseded by ironic pain with a tinge of black humor as we see the head of the stubborn grandfather of Hrma gets crushed to stardust by a German tank, apparently to stop their accession, though failing to solicit any comfort even after death as people consider him insane despite his 鈥榖rave鈥� act.
鈥橳urn around and go back, turn around and鈥︹€� And then the lieutenant gave a signal with his pennant, and the tank changed its mind and moved forward, but Grandfather never budged, and the tank ran over him and crushed his head, and after that there was nothing standing in the way of the German army.
Our narrator, Hrma braves himself to move forward through these clamorous and tormenting circumstances. He oscillates from his strive of defining himself to getting over his infidelities. The apprentice at a Czech railway station has to resolve his numerous worries ranging from his burdensome virginity, his unassumed love with Masha to scandals happening in the station-master鈥檚 office. However, the culprit, Mr. Hubicka enjoys the celebrity status in the town as he becomes a role model for youngsters after that scandal, and our narrator does not seem too unaffected by him. However, the author urges upon, in a sarcastic demeanor, the collapse of the youth who keeps its eyes shut to distressing and wounding realities of the county and fails to rise to the occasion, often takes refuge in timid games.
鈥橳he curse of this erotic century! Everything鈥檚 saturated with sex, nothing sex and erotic stimulants!
Closely Watched Trains is a coming-of-age tale of the protagonist- Milos Hrma, interspersed with elements of humor and sarcasm with the wit of the author certainly gets better of the readers, especially at the end, wherein, the tale leapfrogs to dense and serious affairs of humanity. Literature has got the ability to withstand the horrific acts of humanity, it may act as a mirror to us, which might reflect our inner selves to us. There are numerous references and allusions through the prose to religion, pigeon, rabbit rearing, to imprinting a woman鈥檚 body with official stamps, which reflects the author鈥檚 ability to seamlessly infuse digressions into prose, only to enhance its richness.
link:
The novel may be having just eighty-odd pages but it doesn鈥檛 limit the artistic abilities of Hrabal, who has been able to create prose dense enough to emanate various facets of a young, tumultuous life in a war-ridden landscape. The faculty of the author to draw the readers' sympathy towards the protagonist is evidently visible, Hrma, who is a sensitive person with a tender heart, seeming to pass his existence through petty frolics and frivolities, is chosen by life itself to achieve undesired greatness eventually. Hrabal鈥檚 universe is a world that provides the weak, downtrodden to realize their true essence, to overcome his loneliness of existence through bearing the unbearable responsibility of being free, absolutely free; to realize the true, authentic existence of himself.
I was lying on him, and I heard peace and silence enter into him, I heard and felt everything stop, like a machine which has broken down.
4/5
transformed us
to something else
otherwise
unknown, to us, then
becomes, our identity, now.
The darkness
our new attribute.
Ghosts of ourselves
we became
perhaps like
walking deaths
died somewhere long back
in our hearts and souls.
link:
I came to know about Bohumil Hrabal only last year through reading his outstandingly dense, haunting but comic book- Too Loud a Solitude, perhaps that鈥檚 the way to describe his fiction since I see that my second brush with his prose brings out the similar feelings, if not the same. Humanity has been struggling with numerous vagaries of existence since the outbreak of civilization, some of the most profound oddities could be wars, holocausts, massacres, and others. In this little gem from the Czech master, we are thrown into the tumultuous days of World War II.
War, as we know, may affect humanity in unprecedented, unusual, unsettling, and undetermined ways; human beings may be ripped off what is considered as humanity, for it might come down to the basic survival instinct which is common among all animals per se. The common men, who otherwise encompass all good and evil, what underlines humanity, may get transformed into killing machines, with their emotions giving way to bear our condemned existence at any cost, so may unassumed affairs, unsaid conversations, unexplored avenues remain suspended in the hell of nothingness forever to be burned there.
How much margin we have between life and death there, I guess, both seem to be hanging through a delicate thread which may throw either of them at the disposal of humanity, within splits of a second? How could such death be absorbed, for, one does not get a chance for the realization? And it is not that they are already transformed into walking deaths, having died somewhere long ago, in their souls? The 鈥榞reat鈥� acts such as wars seem to beset the entire lives of men as these keep on haunting humanity even after the wars, for the wounds of such acts may stab you deep down all the way to your soul, recuperation from those mutilations does not come easy.
He was a man, too, like me, or like Mr Hubicka, like us he hadn鈥檛 any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other and brought each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other, and found a lot to talk about.
link:
Milos Hrma is a reticent young man who tries to assume his existence amidst the harrowing and bombing settings of WWII wherein Germans are losing their control over Czechoslovakia. The story starts with wry and acerbic humor as we find the remains of a German plane hovering over the landscape. However, the reader is abruptly taken off guard and the humor is superseded by ironic pain with a tinge of black humor as we see the head of the stubborn grandfather of Hrma gets crushed to stardust by a German tank, apparently to stop their accession, though failing to solicit any comfort even after death as people consider him insane despite his 鈥榖rave鈥� act.
鈥橳urn around and go back, turn around and鈥︹€� And then the lieutenant gave a signal with his pennant, and the tank changed its mind and moved forward, but Grandfather never budged, and the tank ran over him and crushed his head, and after that there was nothing standing in the way of the German army.
Our narrator, Hrma braves himself to move forward through these clamorous and tormenting circumstances. He oscillates from his strive of defining himself to getting over his infidelities. The apprentice at a Czech railway station has to resolve his numerous worries ranging from his burdensome virginity, his unassumed love with Masha to scandals happening in the station-master鈥檚 office. However, the culprit, Mr. Hubicka enjoys the celebrity status in the town as he becomes a role model for youngsters after that scandal, and our narrator does not seem too unaffected by him. However, the author urges upon, in a sarcastic demeanor, the collapse of the youth who keeps its eyes shut to distressing and wounding realities of the county and fails to rise to the occasion, often takes refuge in timid games.
鈥橳he curse of this erotic century! Everything鈥檚 saturated with sex, nothing sex and erotic stimulants!
Closely Watched Trains is a coming-of-age tale of the protagonist- Milos Hrma, interspersed with elements of humor and sarcasm with the wit of the author certainly gets better of the readers, especially at the end, wherein, the tale leapfrogs to dense and serious affairs of humanity. Literature has got the ability to withstand the horrific acts of humanity, it may act as a mirror to us, which might reflect our inner selves to us. There are numerous references and allusions through the prose to religion, pigeon, rabbit rearing, to imprinting a woman鈥檚 body with official stamps, which reflects the author鈥檚 ability to seamlessly infuse digressions into prose, only to enhance its richness.
link:
The novel may be having just eighty-odd pages but it doesn鈥檛 limit the artistic abilities of Hrabal, who has been able to create prose dense enough to emanate various facets of a young, tumultuous life in a war-ridden landscape. The faculty of the author to draw the readers' sympathy towards the protagonist is evidently visible, Hrma, who is a sensitive person with a tender heart, seeming to pass his existence through petty frolics and frivolities, is chosen by life itself to achieve undesired greatness eventually. Hrabal鈥檚 universe is a world that provides the weak, downtrodden to realize their true essence, to overcome his loneliness of existence through bearing the unbearable responsibility of being free, absolutely free; to realize the true, authentic existence of himself.
I was lying on him, and I heard peace and silence enter into him, I heard and felt everything stop, like a machine which has broken down.
4/5
April 11, 2020
A Noir Farce.
In the closing months of WW II in provincial Czech, the social system of the national railways copes with the German military, allied raids, and the sexual fetishes of the local dispatcher. Amidst the detritus of war - dead and dying live-stock, wrecked railway carriages, crashed fighter planes, the dead and wounded returning from the front - the station-master's concern is principally the well-being of his Polish pigeons and the sanctity of his Turkish-themed office.
But an undercurrent is also clear: 'The Germans are swine but they're our swine and they will be victorious and we will have a Free Europe' is the attitude of one German-speaking official. Resistance takes place but only about as casually as collaboration. Closely Watched Trains was first published in 1965 while Czechoslovakia was united and Communist. Soviet tanks were to roll through within three years during the Prague Spring. The theme of keeping one's head down with the dominant force must have caused a stir despite the black comedy that dominates the book.
What is important to all the characters is really not the outcome of the war, or even whether German or Czech is the official national language, but the experience of their own lives. Or inexperience, as the case may be. A young man's sexual inadequacy, a young woman's hopes of cinematic stardom, organisational advancement, the disciplinary process of the railways. Life, in other words, goes on, petty details are important even, perhaps especially, in the midst of chaos. Ultimately Hrabal's pointed irony is probably the only way to deal with the powerlessness in such an overwhelming condition.
In the closing months of WW II in provincial Czech, the social system of the national railways copes with the German military, allied raids, and the sexual fetishes of the local dispatcher. Amidst the detritus of war - dead and dying live-stock, wrecked railway carriages, crashed fighter planes, the dead and wounded returning from the front - the station-master's concern is principally the well-being of his Polish pigeons and the sanctity of his Turkish-themed office.
But an undercurrent is also clear: 'The Germans are swine but they're our swine and they will be victorious and we will have a Free Europe' is the attitude of one German-speaking official. Resistance takes place but only about as casually as collaboration. Closely Watched Trains was first published in 1965 while Czechoslovakia was united and Communist. Soviet tanks were to roll through within three years during the Prague Spring. The theme of keeping one's head down with the dominant force must have caused a stir despite the black comedy that dominates the book.
What is important to all the characters is really not the outcome of the war, or even whether German or Czech is the official national language, but the experience of their own lives. Or inexperience, as the case may be. A young man's sexual inadequacy, a young woman's hopes of cinematic stardom, organisational advancement, the disciplinary process of the railways. Life, in other words, goes on, petty details are important even, perhaps especially, in the midst of chaos. Ultimately Hrabal's pointed irony is probably the only way to deal with the powerlessness in such an overwhelming condition.
October 10, 2021
"Closely Watched Trains" is Hrabal鈥檚 post-war novella that describes the life of a young railroad apprentice, Milo拧 Hrma, living in Czechoslovakia in the last month of the German occupation during WWII. Hrabal toys around with the idea of watching and being watched, as our protagonist is closely watching the trains, the visible sign of German oppression, in his coming-of-age he is preoccupied with the idea of being watched, not for, as we would expect, political resistance, but sexual inadequacy. Or at least it is easier for him to think so. Troubled with the idea of not being man enough for premature ejaculation that occurred on his first attempt at sexual intercourse, he attempts suicide by slitting his writs.
鈥淭hree months ago I slashed my wrists, and on the face of it I had no reason to do such a thing, but I did have a reason, and I knew what it was, and I was only afraid that everyone who looked at me was guessing at what that reason could be. Hence these eyes behind every window. What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age? 鈥�
Milo拧 is obsessed with one questing; 鈥滻s he a man?鈥� He is constructing the idea of his manhood in the ability to perform a sexual act, not in the ability to perform an act of courage in resisting the ruling evil that he has to watch every day at work while keeping his head down, which lingers in his subconscious. What, after all, makes a man?
Hrma is a sensitive person with a tender heart, that looks at the world with a sense of empathy, forced to watch German train, the closely watched ones that are carrying so much of Jewish population to their death. But this is never explicitly discussed by Milo拧. The closes he gets to it is when he is, symbolically, crying over the train transportation of animals to slaughterhouses, being outraged by the conditions the Germans put them in. 鈥淐losely watched trains鈥� and the horror that is carried by them not being openly acknowledged creates great tension in the novel, alleviated by the lighter themes of everyday life, and comical sexual intercourses.
Hrabal does something very interesting in introjection of the sexuality in the story. In the one sense, sexuality is a drive for life and passion, persisting in the occupied population under the war and smog of death, in people that are forced to collaborate with an evil regime. In coping with the uncertainty of war鈥檚 end people minimize stress by caring more about the experience of their own lives, than the fate of the world. Also, it helps create the darkly comic tone, a humoral note that helps in transcending the terrifying atmosphere of the moment. Also, sexual affairs bring to the characters not only the comic but a great moral relief. Living in the land occupied by Nazis these people are living in a moral dystopia. The evil has came to the power, the rights and wrongs are being perpetually twisted, and they have to serve the government that has laws that enable the killings of innocent. A lot of preexisting ethics and moral boundaries are being annihilated and rewritten before their eyes, as Nietzsche predicted, and in the station master's words: 鈥淣either God nor myth, neither allegory nor symbol 鈥� We鈥檙e on our own in this world, so everything鈥檚 allowed.鈥�
But, ironically the station-master forms this word not in reaction to the times, but in the reaction of sexual activity of one of the train station employees. What is perceived as sexual immorality gives a safe outlet to the outrage on the moral decadence of the times, resulting in this authentic, but redirected outburst: 鈥淭he curse of this erotic century! Everything鈥檚 saturated with sex, nothing but sex and erotic stimulants!鈥�
Which can make one think of how much of people鈥檚 misdoings are projected onto the strict moral rules of sexuality? Is sexuality a safe place for one鈥檚 and others鈥� moral condemnation, at times when we are not able to confess or see for ourselves the greater evil we are doing or ignoring? I'm reminiscent of the words of Jung, who observed that all sexual problems are at core spiritual, and vice versa.
Ventilating in the moral outrage station-master gives away the core point and the motive for his intense emotions, the atmosphere of terror in watching the trains that transport innocent people to death camps; 鈥淭he more immorality and hedonism, the less cradles and the more coffins!鈥� 鈥� But, ironically, all the characters at the station are closely watching, and shutting their eyes at the same time.
Our protagonist finds his relief at the end in the final act of rebellion against Germans, their trains, and the military. There he finds his true self and freedom, which makes one think that neurosis is not only caused by sexual, but also moral repressions.
鈥淭hree months ago I slashed my wrists, and on the face of it I had no reason to do such a thing, but I did have a reason, and I knew what it was, and I was only afraid that everyone who looked at me was guessing at what that reason could be. Hence these eyes behind every window. What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age? 鈥�
Milo拧 is obsessed with one questing; 鈥滻s he a man?鈥� He is constructing the idea of his manhood in the ability to perform a sexual act, not in the ability to perform an act of courage in resisting the ruling evil that he has to watch every day at work while keeping his head down, which lingers in his subconscious. What, after all, makes a man?
Hrma is a sensitive person with a tender heart, that looks at the world with a sense of empathy, forced to watch German train, the closely watched ones that are carrying so much of Jewish population to their death. But this is never explicitly discussed by Milo拧. The closes he gets to it is when he is, symbolically, crying over the train transportation of animals to slaughterhouses, being outraged by the conditions the Germans put them in. 鈥淐losely watched trains鈥� and the horror that is carried by them not being openly acknowledged creates great tension in the novel, alleviated by the lighter themes of everyday life, and comical sexual intercourses.
Hrabal does something very interesting in introjection of the sexuality in the story. In the one sense, sexuality is a drive for life and passion, persisting in the occupied population under the war and smog of death, in people that are forced to collaborate with an evil regime. In coping with the uncertainty of war鈥檚 end people minimize stress by caring more about the experience of their own lives, than the fate of the world. Also, it helps create the darkly comic tone, a humoral note that helps in transcending the terrifying atmosphere of the moment. Also, sexual affairs bring to the characters not only the comic but a great moral relief. Living in the land occupied by Nazis these people are living in a moral dystopia. The evil has came to the power, the rights and wrongs are being perpetually twisted, and they have to serve the government that has laws that enable the killings of innocent. A lot of preexisting ethics and moral boundaries are being annihilated and rewritten before their eyes, as Nietzsche predicted, and in the station master's words: 鈥淣either God nor myth, neither allegory nor symbol 鈥� We鈥檙e on our own in this world, so everything鈥檚 allowed.鈥�
But, ironically the station-master forms this word not in reaction to the times, but in the reaction of sexual activity of one of the train station employees. What is perceived as sexual immorality gives a safe outlet to the outrage on the moral decadence of the times, resulting in this authentic, but redirected outburst: 鈥淭he curse of this erotic century! Everything鈥檚 saturated with sex, nothing but sex and erotic stimulants!鈥�
Which can make one think of how much of people鈥檚 misdoings are projected onto the strict moral rules of sexuality? Is sexuality a safe place for one鈥檚 and others鈥� moral condemnation, at times when we are not able to confess or see for ourselves the greater evil we are doing or ignoring? I'm reminiscent of the words of Jung, who observed that all sexual problems are at core spiritual, and vice versa.
Ventilating in the moral outrage station-master gives away the core point and the motive for his intense emotions, the atmosphere of terror in watching the trains that transport innocent people to death camps; 鈥淭he more immorality and hedonism, the less cradles and the more coffins!鈥� 鈥� But, ironically, all the characters at the station are closely watching, and shutting their eyes at the same time.
Our protagonist finds his relief at the end in the final act of rebellion against Germans, their trains, and the military. There he finds his true self and freedom, which makes one think that neurosis is not only caused by sexual, but also moral repressions.
June 14, 2024
Milan Kundera brought me here, and I'm so glad that he did. This novella, which I knew little about beforehand, other than it obviously featured trains, exceeded my expectations in just about every way possible. In a darkly comic tone, which moved from being relatively bleak one minute, to warm and almost chucklesome the next, Hrabal shows just why he left a big mark on European post-war literature, and helped influence many other writers in the process. Milo拧 Hrma, an innocent, slightly hapless young individual, is a railway dispatcher and signalman working at a Czech station in the mid 40s, and much of the narrative is an account of his misadventures doing his job, and trying to lose his virginity, something which caused him great embarrassment in the past leading him to attempt suicide. It's not everyday you come across a book featuring death, explosions, Nazis, cows and horses, premature ejaculation, and lines such as 鈥淭he curse of this erotic century! Everything鈥檚 saturated with sex, nothing but sex and erotic stimulants!鈥�. But that's what made this so great. It's borderline farcical at times, but still ashen and serious when it needs to be. I loved it! Why waste time on big fat bloated novels that end up going nowhere when vastly superior novellas like this are waiting to be gobbled up.
September 18, 2023
Gratitude and Trigger Warnings
I鈥檓 profoundly grateful for the wonderful books I鈥檝e discovered from the inspirational reviews of my GR friends, including Hrabal鈥檚 Too Loud a Solitude (see my 5* review HERE, and my shelf of friends鈥� reccs HERE).
I try to avoid reading reviews shortly before I read a book, not for fear of spoilers (my friends tend to avoid or hide those), and so their thoughts don鈥檛 frame my own reaction.
In this case, it would have been better if I had. It was not the right time for me to read about a suicide survivor, but I had no idea until I was part way through.
鈥�I couldn鈥檛 recognise myself, I was looking for my own face but it wasn't there, as if I鈥檇 become someone else.鈥� Thoughts after leaving hospital.
Image: Milo拧 looking in the mirror, from (which I鈥檝e not seen) (.)
There鈥檚 bawdy humour, beauty, and poignancy on these pages. It鈥檚 not primarily a depressing book, nor even one that focuses on suicidal ideation (though the attempt is described in oddly beautiful detail). Nevertheless, it compounded my lack of connection with Milo拧 Hrma and engagement with the story he told.
Infer nothing from my 3*: I was unable to rate it objectively.
Watching and Being Watched
It鈥檚 set during WW2, in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Milo拧 is a 22-year old trainee station guard (鈥渄espatcher鈥�), where the 鈥渃lose surveillance鈥� trains rumble through. He鈥檚 ever aware of being watched, and often mentions eyes. Of the refugees from the bombing of Dresden, he says:
鈥�Not one of them blinked, as though the horror had cut off their eyelids鈥�,
whereas the eyes of cows heading for slaughter were
鈥�full of curiosity and grief鈥�.
What Makes a Man?
鈥�I was man enough until it came to the point of being a man.鈥�
This is a bildungsroman, covering a short period of a troubled young man鈥檚 life. His family are not particularly popular in the small town. He鈥檚 terribly naive in sexual matters (catching a colleague in flagrante, he doesn't realise what he鈥檚 seen!), and describes his putative girlfriend, Masha, in fond and admiring terms, but not really sexual ones.
Unsurprisingly, fumbled intimacy beneath a photographer鈥檚 studio sign saying 鈥淔inished in five minutes鈥� haunts him. The solutions are comical and perhaps a little shocking.
What Radicalises?
Image: Milo拧 and probably Hubi膷ka or the station master, from (which I鈥檝e not seen) (.)
From Kafka, through Hrabal, to Baker
鈥�They were doing their utmost to dredge up a realistic basis for a criminal charge of infringing personal liberty.鈥�
The farcical disciplinary hearing is slightly Kafkaesque, though the person concerned knows what he鈥檚 accused of (and knows his guilt).
The greater similarity is with Nicholson Baker鈥檚 The Mezzanine (see my 4* review ) in the way seemingly ordinary sensations are described in minute detail: a plane breaking up and crashing, the varied sounds of trains rumbling through, a glint of light on prismatic snow crystals, blood dispersing in water, or the feel of fabric on the skin as you tighten an item with shiny buttons.
Quotes
鈥� 鈥淚n every crystal of snow there seemed to be an infinitely tiny second hand ticking, the snow crackled so in the brilliant sunlight, shimmering in many colours.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚t seemed strange to me that both these SS men were beautiful.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚 always had a horror of beautiful people.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚n a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淭he stars were palpitating in the sky.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚 had been predestined for another death than the one I had attempted.鈥�
I鈥檓 profoundly grateful for the wonderful books I鈥檝e discovered from the inspirational reviews of my GR friends, including Hrabal鈥檚 Too Loud a Solitude (see my 5* review HERE, and my shelf of friends鈥� reccs HERE).
I try to avoid reading reviews shortly before I read a book, not for fear of spoilers (my friends tend to avoid or hide those), and so their thoughts don鈥檛 frame my own reaction.
In this case, it would have been better if I had. It was not the right time for me to read about a suicide survivor, but I had no idea until I was part way through.
鈥�I couldn鈥檛 recognise myself, I was looking for my own face but it wasn't there, as if I鈥檇 become someone else.鈥� Thoughts after leaving hospital.
Image: Milo拧 looking in the mirror, from (which I鈥檝e not seen) (.)
There鈥檚 bawdy humour, beauty, and poignancy on these pages. It鈥檚 not primarily a depressing book, nor even one that focuses on suicidal ideation (though the attempt is described in oddly beautiful detail). Nevertheless, it compounded my lack of connection with Milo拧 Hrma and engagement with the story he told.
Infer nothing from my 3*: I was unable to rate it objectively.
Watching and Being Watched
It鈥檚 set during WW2, in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Milo拧 is a 22-year old trainee station guard (鈥渄espatcher鈥�), where the 鈥渃lose surveillance鈥� trains rumble through. He鈥檚 ever aware of being watched, and often mentions eyes. Of the refugees from the bombing of Dresden, he says:
鈥�Not one of them blinked, as though the horror had cut off their eyelids鈥�,
whereas the eyes of cows heading for slaughter were
鈥�full of curiosity and grief鈥�.
What Makes a Man?
鈥�I was man enough until it came to the point of being a man.鈥�
This is a bildungsroman, covering a short period of a troubled young man鈥檚 life. His family are not particularly popular in the small town. He鈥檚 terribly naive in sexual matters (catching a colleague in flagrante, he doesn't realise what he鈥檚 seen!), and describes his putative girlfriend, Masha, in fond and admiring terms, but not really sexual ones.
Unsurprisingly, fumbled intimacy beneath a photographer鈥檚 studio sign saying 鈥淔inished in five minutes鈥� haunts him. The solutions are comical and perhaps a little shocking.
What Radicalises?
Image: Milo拧 and probably Hubi膷ka or the station master, from (which I鈥檝e not seen) (.)
From Kafka, through Hrabal, to Baker
鈥�They were doing their utmost to dredge up a realistic basis for a criminal charge of infringing personal liberty.鈥�
The farcical disciplinary hearing is slightly Kafkaesque, though the person concerned knows what he鈥檚 accused of (and knows his guilt).
The greater similarity is with Nicholson Baker鈥檚 The Mezzanine (see my 4* review ) in the way seemingly ordinary sensations are described in minute detail: a plane breaking up and crashing, the varied sounds of trains rumbling through, a glint of light on prismatic snow crystals, blood dispersing in water, or the feel of fabric on the skin as you tighten an item with shiny buttons.
Quotes
鈥� 鈥淚n every crystal of snow there seemed to be an infinitely tiny second hand ticking, the snow crackled so in the brilliant sunlight, shimmering in many colours.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚t seemed strange to me that both these SS men were beautiful.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚 always had a horror of beautiful people.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚n a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淭he stars were palpitating in the sky.鈥�
鈥� 鈥淚 had been predestined for another death than the one I had attempted.鈥�
February 21, 2021
乇賵丕賷丞 賱賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱鬲卮賷賰賷 亘賵賴賵賲賷賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱 賵噩賲丕賱 丕賱爻乇丿 丕賱匕賷 賷賰賲賳 賮賷 丕賱鬲賮丕氐賷賱
丕賱乇丕賵賷 賲賷賱賵卮 賴乇賲丕 丕賱賲賵馗賮 丕賱賲鬲賲乇賳 賮賷 爻賰賰 丕賱丨丿賷丿 毓賱賶 鬲賳馗賷賲 丨乇賰丞 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲
賮賷 賲丨胤丞 氐睾賷乇丞 賮賷 賲賯丕胤毓丞 鬲卮賷賰賷丞 賯乇亘 賳賴丕賷丞 丕賱丨乇亘 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷丞 丕賱孬丕賳賷丞
賷乇丕賯亘 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲 鬲丨鬲 丕賱丨乇丕爻丞 丕賱賲卮丿丿丞 丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨賲賱 丕賱賲丐賳 賵丕賱兀爻賱丨丞 賱賯賵丕鬲 丕賱丕丨鬲賱丕賱 丕賱兀賱賲丕賳賷丞
賵賷丨賰賷 毓賳 毓賲賱賴 賵丨賷丕鬲賴 賵兀爻乇鬲賴 賵毓賱丕賯鬲賴 亘丨亘賷亘鬲賴, 賵賷氐賮 鬲賮丕氐賷賱 賰賱 賲賰丕賳 賵丨丿孬 賵卮禺氐賷丞
賷毓乇囟 賴乇丕亘丕賱 毓亘孬賷丞 丕賱丨乇亘 賵囟丨丕賷丕賴丕 賮賷 賱賯胤丕鬲 賲賲賷夭丞 賵賷賰鬲亘 亘兀爻賱賵亘 賮賰丕賴賷 噩賲賷賱
丕賱乇丕賵賷 賲賷賱賵卮 賴乇賲丕 丕賱賲賵馗賮 丕賱賲鬲賲乇賳 賮賷 爻賰賰 丕賱丨丿賷丿 毓賱賶 鬲賳馗賷賲 丨乇賰丞 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲
賮賷 賲丨胤丞 氐睾賷乇丞 賮賷 賲賯丕胤毓丞 鬲卮賷賰賷丞 賯乇亘 賳賴丕賷丞 丕賱丨乇亘 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷丞 丕賱孬丕賳賷丞
賷乇丕賯亘 丕賱賯胤丕乇丕鬲 鬲丨鬲 丕賱丨乇丕爻丞 丕賱賲卮丿丿丞 丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨賲賱 丕賱賲丐賳 賵丕賱兀爻賱丨丞 賱賯賵丕鬲 丕賱丕丨鬲賱丕賱 丕賱兀賱賲丕賳賷丞
賵賷丨賰賷 毓賳 毓賲賱賴 賵丨賷丕鬲賴 賵兀爻乇鬲賴 賵毓賱丕賯鬲賴 亘丨亘賷亘鬲賴, 賵賷氐賮 鬲賮丕氐賷賱 賰賱 賲賰丕賳 賵丨丿孬 賵卮禺氐賷丞
賷毓乇囟 賴乇丕亘丕賱 毓亘孬賷丞 丕賱丨乇亘 賵囟丨丕賷丕賴丕 賮賷 賱賯胤丕鬲 賲賲賷夭丞 賵賷賰鬲亘 亘兀爻賱賵亘 賮賰丕賴賷 噩賲賷賱
June 9, 2019
La inocencia, la aparente ingenuidad, que es uno de los disfraces m谩s eficaces que puede tomar la iron铆a, Hrabal la viste con una elegancia y una sutileza tal que es capaz de hacerte sonre铆r, enternecerte y estremecerte al tiempo.
April 14, 2023
賲賳 丕亘鬲丿丕 賮蹖賱賲 亘爻蹖丕乇 夭蹖亘丕蹖 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 亘賴 讴丕乇诏乇丿丕賳蹖 蹖蹖乇跇蹖 賲賳锟斤拷賱 賵 爻丕賱 1966 丿蹖丿賲 讴賴 賮賵賯 丕賱毓丕丿賴 禺賵亘 亘賵丿. 讴鬲丕亘 丿蹖诏乇 賴乇丕亘丕賱 蹖毓賳蹖 鬲賳賴丕蹖蹖 倬乇賴蹖丕賴賵 乇丕 賴賲 禺賵丕賳丿賴 亘賵丿賲. 丿乇 賲賵乇丿 鬲乇噩賲賴 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 (毓丿賳丕賳 睾乇蹖賮蹖) 丨丿爻 賲蹖夭賳賲 讴賴 鬲乇噩賲賴 禺賵亘蹖 賳蹖爻鬲 賵 賴賲趩賳蹖賳 賲胤賲卅賳賲 讴賴 讴鬲丕亘 爻丕賳爻賵乇 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲. 亘賴 丿賵爻鬲丕賳 毓夭蹖夭 丕讴蹖丿丕 鬲賵氐蹖賴 賲蹖讴賳賲 讴賴 丕蹖賳 鬲乇噩賲賴 丕夭 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 賳禺賵丕賳賳丿. 丕诏乇 賲蹖 鬲賵丕賳賳丿 丕賳诏賱蹖爻蹖 丌賳 乇丕 亘禺賵丕賳賳丿 賵 蹖丕 賮蹖賱賲 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 亘亘蹖賳賳丿. 亘賴 讴爻丕賳蹖 賴賲 讴賴 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 賲胤丕賱毓賴 讴乇丿賴 丕賳丿 鬲賵氐蹖賴 丕讴蹖丿 賲蹖 讴賳賲 讴賴 賮蹖賱賲 丌賳 乇丕 鬲賴蹖賴 讴賳賳丿 賵 亘亘蹖賳賳丿.
October 25, 2015
The coming-of-age story of Milos Hrma - a young, na茂ve railwayman - unfolds in a small lethargic train station, set in North Bohemia, Prague during the last two weeks of WWII, 1945. Milos narrates a tale which covers a timespan of 48 hours in a series of flashbacks, where it is revealed how the scars on his wrists came to be and how three generations of Hrma men managed to besmirch their family name.
Milos's day is spent dreamily watching military trains pass through to the front transporting the injured and dying; displaced refugees who had lost their homes in bombings; even dead or dying animals - evoking a clear picture of the chaotic period as a result of the impending German collapse.
The plot moves surrealistically, from a natural to humorous manner: the daily lives and interactions of the townfolk; the histrionics of his forebears; the German Occupation and movement of Nazi troops from the front; Milos's humiliating 'first time' with his girlfriend that later prompted a suicide attempt; the licentious scene with dispatcher Hubi膷ka, inkstamping the derri猫re of the female telegraphist. I found such ribald scenes and periodic, foolish, digressive banter to be quite amusing, highlighting Hrabal's skill at veiling human drama with his distinctive sense of humor. About Milos's grandfather who thought himself a "hypnotist:"
Milos's youthful idealistic view of Hubi膷ka, and a personal, perhaps subconscious, drive to remove the stigma from his family name -particularly his grandfather's doomed effort- lead him to accept a dangerous mission that culminates in a dramatic heroic deed, as he mercilessly exclaims:
War fictionistas who have read would note echoes of a similar fateful and humanistic scene.
Bohumil Hrabal's short, postwar novel is a stunning blend of humor, humanity, tragedy and heroism, justifiably earning the appellation of "masterpiece." Highly recommend.
Other books I've read by Bohumil Hrabal here.
*
From wikipedia.org:
Bohumil Hrabal (Czech pronunciation: [藞bo搔um瑟l 藞搔rabal]) (28 March 1914 鈥� 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century. During the war, he worked as railway labourer and dispatcher in Kostomlaty, near Nymburk, an experience reflected in one of his best-known works Ost艡e sledovan茅 vlaky (Closely Observed Trains).
Milos's day is spent dreamily watching military trains pass through to the front transporting the injured and dying; displaced refugees who had lost their homes in bombings; even dead or dying animals - evoking a clear picture of the chaotic period as a result of the impending German collapse.
The plot moves surrealistically, from a natural to humorous manner: the daily lives and interactions of the townfolk; the histrionics of his forebears; the German Occupation and movement of Nazi troops from the front; Milos's humiliating 'first time' with his girlfriend that later prompted a suicide attempt; the licentious scene with dispatcher Hubi膷ka, inkstamping the derri猫re of the female telegraphist. I found such ribald scenes and periodic, foolish, digressive banter to be quite amusing, highlighting Hrabal's skill at veiling human drama with his distinctive sense of humor. About Milos's grandfather who thought himself a "hypnotist:"
In this tank waist-deep in the cabin stood an officer of the Reich, with a black beret with the death's- head badge and crossed bones on his head, and my grandfather kept on going steadily forward, straight toward this tank, with his hands stretched out, and his eyes spraying towards the Germans the thought: 'Turn around and go back!'
And really, that tank halted. The whole army stood still. Grandfather touched the leading tank with his outstretched fingers, and kept pouring out towards it the same suggestion: 'Turn around and go back, turn around and...' And then the lieutenant gave a signal with his pennant, and the tank changed its mind and moved forward, but grandfather never budged, and the tank ran over him and crushed his head, and after that there was nothing standing in the way of the German army.
Milos's youthful idealistic view of Hubi膷ka, and a personal, perhaps subconscious, drive to remove the stigma from his family name -particularly his grandfather's doomed effort- lead him to accept a dangerous mission that culminates in a dramatic heroic deed, as he mercilessly exclaims:
"You should have sat at home on your arse..."
War fictionistas who have read would note echoes of a similar fateful and humanistic scene.
Bohumil Hrabal's short, postwar novel is a stunning blend of humor, humanity, tragedy and heroism, justifiably earning the appellation of "masterpiece." Highly recommend.
Other books I've read by Bohumil Hrabal here.
*
From wikipedia.org:
Bohumil Hrabal (Czech pronunciation: [藞bo搔um瑟l 藞搔rabal]) (28 March 1914 鈥� 3 February 1997) was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century. During the war, he worked as railway labourer and dispatcher in Kostomlaty, near Nymburk, an experience reflected in one of his best-known works Ost艡e sledovan茅 vlaky (Closely Observed Trains).
June 18, 2023
- 毓亘孬賸丕 丨丕賵賱鬲 丕賱廿賳爻噩丕賲 賲毓賴丕 賵賱賲 丕爻鬲胤毓! 毓丕賲賱 爻賰丞 賯胤丕乇貙 鬲丕乇賷禺 毓丕卅賱鬲賴 賰爻賱 毓賱賶 賮卮賱貙 孬賲 乇卅賷爻 丕賱賲丨胤丞 賵丕賱丨賲丕賲丕鬲貙 賵"賴賵亘賷賰丕" 賵禺鬲賲 賲丐禺乇丞 毓丕賲賱丞 丕賱鬲賱睾乇丕賮貙 賮爻禺乇賷丞 丕賱丕賱賲丕賳 賲賳 丕賱鬲卮賷賰貙 孬賲 鬲賮噩賷乇 丕賱鬲卮賷賰 賱賯胤丕乇賴賲 (賰噩賵丕亘 毓賱賶 丕賱爻禺乇賷丞) 賵丕賱卮賮賯丞 毓賱賷賴賲 賱賵 賰丕賳賵丕 賯丿 亘賯賵丕 亘亘賱丕丿賴賲 賵賱賲 賷兀鬲賵丕 丕賱賶 丕賱鬲卮賷賰! 賵"賲丕卮丕" 賵鬲噩丕乇亘 丕賱噩賳爻 丕賱丕賵賱賶 賵丕賱鬲毓賱賾賲 賲賳 丕賱賳爻丕亍 "丕賱丕賰孬乇" 禺亘乇丞...
- 爻禺乇賷丞 賮賵賲囟丞 噩賲賷賱丞 賮囟丨賰丞 賮鬲賮丕賴丞 孬賲 爻禺丕賮丞 丕禺乇賶 賮乇賵鬲賷賳 賵賲賱賱 孬賲 丕禺鬲賷丕乇丕鬲 賵鬲乇賰賷亘 噩賲賱賷 賲卮鬲鬲 賲賳 丕賱賲鬲乇噩賲...
- 賯乇兀鬲 亘毓囟 丕賱賲乇丕噩毓丕鬲 賱賱兀氐丿賯丕亍 賵丕賱賲乇丕噩毓賷賳 亘丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱廿賳賰賱賷夭賷丞 賵鬲乇噩賲鬲 丕賱亘毓囟 賲賳 丕賱廿賷胤丕賱賷丞 賵賷亘丿賵 丕賳 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱賶 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賲 鬲賰賳 賰賲丕 賷噩亘.. 賱丕 丕丿乇賷 賱賰賳賳賷 賱賲 丕噩丿 卮賷卅丕賸 毓賱賷賴 丕賱賯賷賲丞 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞!!
- 爻禺乇賷丞 賮賵賲囟丞 噩賲賷賱丞 賮囟丨賰丞 賮鬲賮丕賴丞 孬賲 爻禺丕賮丞 丕禺乇賶 賮乇賵鬲賷賳 賵賲賱賱 孬賲 丕禺鬲賷丕乇丕鬲 賵鬲乇賰賷亘 噩賲賱賷 賲卮鬲鬲 賲賳 丕賱賲鬲乇噩賲...
- 賯乇兀鬲 亘毓囟 丕賱賲乇丕噩毓丕鬲 賱賱兀氐丿賯丕亍 賵丕賱賲乇丕噩毓賷賳 亘丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱廿賳賰賱賷夭賷丞 賵鬲乇噩賲鬲 丕賱亘毓囟 賲賳 丕賱廿賷胤丕賱賷丞 賵賷亘丿賵 丕賳 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱賶 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賲 鬲賰賳 賰賲丕 賷噩亘.. 賱丕 丕丿乇賷 賱賰賳賳賷 賱賲 丕噩丿 卮賷卅丕賸 毓賱賷賴 丕賱賯賷賲丞 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞!!
July 15, 2020
Ost艡e Sledovan茅 Vlaky = Closely Watched Trains, Bohumil Hrabal
The young Milo拧 Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work.
The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubi膷ka's success with women.
Milo拧 holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor M谩拧a. The experienced Hubi膷ka presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Milo拧 is still a virgin.
鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮 乇賵夭 趩賴丕乇丿賴賲 賲丕賴 噩賵賱丕蹖 爻丕賱 2014 賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 賳馗丕乇鬲 丿賯蹖賯 賯胤丕乇賴丕貨 亘賴賵賲蹖賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱貨 賲鬲乇噩賲 毓丿賳丕賳 睾乇蹖賮蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 丕賮乇丕夭貙 趩丕倬 丿賵賲 1392貨 丿乇 118氐貨 卮丕亘讴 9789642436712貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴蹖 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 趩讴 - 爻丿賴 20 賲
乇賲丕賳 芦賳馗丕乇鬲 丿賯蹖賯 賯胤丕乇賴丕禄 賳賵卮鬲賴 芦亘賴賵賲蹖賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱禄 丿乇 爻丕賱 1965賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 賳诏丕卮鬲賴 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲.貨 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 丿乇 讴卮賵乇 芦趩讴禄 賲蹖诏匕乇丿 賵 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 丕夭 丿賵乇丕賳 鬲爻賱胤 芦丌賱賲丕賳 賳丕夭蹖禄 亘賴 讴卮賵乇賴丕蹖 丕乇賵倬丕蹖 卮乇賯蹖 乇丕 亘丕夭诏賵 賲蹖讴賳丿貨 卮禺氐蹖鬲 丕氐賱蹖 乇賲丕賳夭 讴丕乇賲賳丿蹖 丿乇 丕丿丕乇賴 禺胤 乇丕賴 丌賴賳 芦趩讴禄 丕爻鬲 讴賴 讴賵卮卮 賲蹖讴賳丿 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 丿乇 芦丌賲丿 賵 卮丿禄 賯胤丕乇賴丕蹖 芦丌賱賲丕賳蹖禄 丕禺賱丕賱 丕蹖噩丕丿 讴賳丿貙 賵 丕蹖賳 乇賵丨蹖賴 賵 丕禺賱丕賯貙 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 卮蹖賵賴 賵 丕亘夭丕乇蹖 丕爻鬲貙 亘乇丕蹖 倬賳賴丕賳 賲丕賳丿賳 讴丕乇賴丕蹖 丕賵 丕爻鬲.貨
賳賯賱 賳賲賵賳賴 賲鬲賳: 芦賴賲蹖賳 倬乇蹖乇賵夭 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕賴丕蹖 賲鬲禺丕氐賲 蹖讴 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕蹖 卮讴丕乇蹖 丌賱賲丕賳蹖 乇丕 亘乇 賮乇丕夭 卮賴乇 賲丕 亘賴 诏賱賵賱賴 亘爻鬲 賵 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 亘丕賱賴丕蹖卮 乇丕 丿乇爻鬲 賵 丨爻丕亘蹖 噩丿丕 讴乇丿貨 亘毓丿 亘丿賳賴 蹖 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕 丌鬲卮 诏乇賮鬲貙 賵 丿乇 噩丕蹖蹖 丕夭 氐丨乇丕 爻賯賵胤 讴乇丿貙 丕賲丕 亘賴 賲丨囟 噩丿丕 卮丿賳 亘丕賱 丕夭 亘丿賳賴貙 趩賳丿 賲卮鬲 倬蹖趩 賵 賲賴乇賴 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳 倬乇丕讴賳丿賴 卮丿貙 賵 丿乇 丌賳噩丕 亘賴 爻乇 賵 氐賵乇鬲 趩賳丿 夭賳 禺賵乇丿貙 賵 禺賵丿 亘丕賱貙 亘乇 賮乇丕夭 卮賴乇 亘賴 賳賵爻丕賳 丿乇丌賲丿貙 賵 賴乇 讴爻蹖 讴賴 噩乇兀鬲 丿丕卮鬲貙 賲蹖丕蹖爻鬲丕丿 賵 鬲賲丕卮丕蹖卮 賲蹖讴乇丿貙 賵 丕蹖賳 亘賵丿 鬲丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 亘丕 丨乇讴鬲 噩蹖睾丿丕乇蹖 亘丕 賴賲賴 蹖 爻賳诏蹖賳蹖卮 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳 賮乇賵丿 丌賲丿貨 賴賲趩賳丕賳 讴賴 爻丕蹖賴 蹖 丕蹖賳 亘丕賱 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳貙 爻賳诏蹖賳賿 鬲丕亘 賲蹖禺賵乇丿貙 賴賲賴 蹖 賲卮鬲乇蹖賴丕 爻乇丕爻蹖賲賴貙 丕夭 賴乇 丿賵 乇爻鬲賵乇丕賳 亘蹖乇賵賳 夭丿賳丿貙 賵 賴乇 讴爻蹖 讴賴 賲卮睾賵賱 鬲賲丕卮丕蹖 丌賳 亘賵丿貙 亘丕 毓噩賱賴 丕夭 丕蹖賳爻賵 亘賴 丌賳爻賵 賲蹖乇賮鬲貙 賵 蹖丕 亘賴 噩丕蹖蹖讴賴 蹖讴 賱丨馗賴 倬蹖卮 丕蹖爻鬲丕丿賴 亘賵丿 亘乇賲蹖诏卮鬲貙 趩賵賳 亘丕賱 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕賳丿賵賱蹖 睾賵賱 丌爻丕 鬲丕亘 賲蹖禺賵乇丿貙 賵 丌賳 賴丕 乇丕 丿賵丕賳 丿賵丕賳 丿乇 噩賴鬲 賲禺丕賱賮蹖 讴賴 诏賲丕賳 賲蹖乇賮鬲 丿乇 丌賳 賱丨馗賴 爻賯賵胤 讴賳丿 賲蹖乇丕賳丿貙 賵 丿乇 鬲賲丕賲 丕蹖賳 賲丿鬲 氐丿丕蹖 爻丕蹖卮 賳丕賱丕賳蹖 丕夭 丌賳 亘蹖乇賵賳 賲蹖丌賲丿 讴賴 賱丨馗賴 賱丨馗賴 亘蹖卮鬲乇 賲蹖卮丿貨 亘毓丿 賳丕诏賴丕賳 爻賯賵胤 讴乇丿 賵 丿乇 亘丕睾 讴賱蹖爻丕蹖 噩丕賲毓 禺乇丿 卮丿.禄貨
賳賲賵賳賴 丿蹖诏乇: 芦...貨 爻乇亘丕夭 丌賳噩丕 丿乇丕夭 讴卮蹖丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 賲賳 乇賵亘乇賵蹖卮 丿乇丕夭 讴卮蹖丿賴 亘賵丿賲.貨 丿賴丕賳賴 蹖 鬲賮賳诏 乇丕 乇賵蹖 賯賱亘卮 诏匕丕卮鬲賲.貨 乇丕爻鬲 賵 趩倬 乇丕 亘丕 賴賲 賯丕鬲蹖 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿賲貙 丕賲丕 亘丕 丕賲鬲丨丕賳 讴乇丿賳 丕蹖賳 丿爻鬲 賵 亘毓丿 丌賳 蹖讴蹖 丿乇 賲賵乇丿 丕賲讴丕賳 賳賵卮鬲賳貙 鬲賵丕賳爻鬲賲 賲卮讴賱賲 乇丕 丨賱 讴賳賲.貨 亘賱賴貙 丨丕賱丕 鬲賮賳诏 乇丕 乇賵蹖 賯賱亘 爻乇亘丕夭 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿賲 鬲丕 丿蹖诏乇 賮乇蹖丕丿 賳夭賳丿貙 鬲丕 丿蹖诏乇 賴賲蹖賳 胤賵乇 鬲賵蹖 讴賱賴 丕賲 賳讴賵亘丿.貨 賲丕卮賴 乇丕 趩讴丕賳丿賲.貨 鬲蹖乇蹖 乇賴丕 卮丿 賵 丌鬲卮蹖 讴賴 鬲丕 丕毓賲丕賯 乇賮鬲賴 亘賵丿貙 蹖賵賳蹖賮賵乇賲 丕賵 乇丕 爻賵夭丕賳丿.貨 賲蹖鬲賵丕賳爻鬲賲 亘賵蹖 倬賳亘賴 賵 倬卮賲 爻賵禺鬲賴 乇丕 丨爻 讴賳賲貙 丕賲丕 爻乇亘丕夭 丕蹖賳亘丕乇 亘丕 氐丿丕蹖 亘賱賳丿鬲乇蹖 夭賳卮 乇丕貙 賲丕丿乇 亘趩賴 賴丕蹖卮 乇丕貙 賮乇蹖丕丿 讴乇丿貙 賵 亘丕 卮鬲丕亘 亘蹖卮鬲乇蹖 丿乇 噩丕蹖卮 鬲讴丕賳 禺賵乇丿貙 丕賳诏丕乇 讴賴 丕蹖賳賴丕 賯丿賲賴丕蹖 丌禺乇 亘賵丿賳丿 讴賴 亘毓丿卮 亘丕睾 丕爻鬲 賵 亘毓丿 丕夭 丌賳 禺丕賳賴貙 禺丕賳賴 丕蹖 讴賴 毓夭蹖夭鬲乇丕賳卮 丿乇 丌賳 夭賳丿诏蹖 賲蹖讴賳賳丿.禄貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 24/04/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
The young Milo拧 Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work.
The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubi膷ka's success with women.
Milo拧 holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor M谩拧a. The experienced Hubi膷ka presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Milo拧 is still a virgin.
鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮 乇賵夭 趩賴丕乇丿賴賲 賲丕賴 噩賵賱丕蹖 爻丕賱 2014 賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 賳馗丕乇鬲 丿賯蹖賯 賯胤丕乇賴丕貨 亘賴賵賲蹖賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱貨 賲鬲乇噩賲 毓丿賳丕賳 睾乇蹖賮蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 丕賮乇丕夭貙 趩丕倬 丿賵賲 1392貨 丿乇 118氐貨 卮丕亘讴 9789642436712貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴蹖 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 趩讴 - 爻丿賴 20 賲
乇賲丕賳 芦賳馗丕乇鬲 丿賯蹖賯 賯胤丕乇賴丕禄 賳賵卮鬲賴 芦亘賴賵賲蹖賱 賴乇丕亘丕賱禄 丿乇 爻丕賱 1965賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 賳诏丕卮鬲賴 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲.貨 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 丿乇 讴卮賵乇 芦趩讴禄 賲蹖诏匕乇丿 賵 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 丕夭 丿賵乇丕賳 鬲爻賱胤 芦丌賱賲丕賳 賳丕夭蹖禄 亘賴 讴卮賵乇賴丕蹖 丕乇賵倬丕蹖 卮乇賯蹖 乇丕 亘丕夭诏賵 賲蹖讴賳丿貨 卮禺氐蹖鬲 丕氐賱蹖 乇賲丕賳夭 讴丕乇賲賳丿蹖 丿乇 丕丿丕乇賴 禺胤 乇丕賴 丌賴賳 芦趩讴禄 丕爻鬲 讴賴 讴賵卮卮 賲蹖讴賳丿 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 丿乇 芦丌賲丿 賵 卮丿禄 賯胤丕乇賴丕蹖 芦丌賱賲丕賳蹖禄 丕禺賱丕賱 丕蹖噩丕丿 讴賳丿貙 賵 丕蹖賳 乇賵丨蹖賴 賵 丕禺賱丕賯貙 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 卮蹖賵賴 賵 丕亘夭丕乇蹖 丕爻鬲貙 亘乇丕蹖 倬賳賴丕賳 賲丕賳丿賳 讴丕乇賴丕蹖 丕賵 丕爻鬲.貨
賳賯賱 賳賲賵賳賴 賲鬲賳: 芦賴賲蹖賳 倬乇蹖乇賵夭 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕賴丕蹖 賲鬲禺丕氐賲 蹖讴 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕蹖 卮讴丕乇蹖 丌賱賲丕賳蹖 乇丕 亘乇 賮乇丕夭 卮賴乇 賲丕 亘賴 诏賱賵賱賴 亘爻鬲 賵 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 亘丕賱賴丕蹖卮 乇丕 丿乇爻鬲 賵 丨爻丕亘蹖 噩丿丕 讴乇丿貨 亘毓丿 亘丿賳賴 蹖 賴賵丕倬蹖賲丕 丌鬲卮 诏乇賮鬲貙 賵 丿乇 噩丕蹖蹖 丕夭 氐丨乇丕 爻賯賵胤 讴乇丿貙 丕賲丕 亘賴 賲丨囟 噩丿丕 卮丿賳 亘丕賱 丕夭 亘丿賳賴貙 趩賳丿 賲卮鬲 倬蹖趩 賵 賲賴乇賴 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳 倬乇丕讴賳丿賴 卮丿貙 賵 丿乇 丌賳噩丕 亘賴 爻乇 賵 氐賵乇鬲 趩賳丿 夭賳 禺賵乇丿貙 賵 禺賵丿 亘丕賱貙 亘乇 賮乇丕夭 卮賴乇 亘賴 賳賵爻丕賳 丿乇丌賲丿貙 賵 賴乇 讴爻蹖 讴賴 噩乇兀鬲 丿丕卮鬲貙 賲蹖丕蹖爻鬲丕丿 賵 鬲賲丕卮丕蹖卮 賲蹖讴乇丿貙 賵 丕蹖賳 亘賵丿 鬲丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 亘丕 丨乇讴鬲 噩蹖睾丿丕乇蹖 亘丕 賴賲賴 蹖 爻賳诏蹖賳蹖卮 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳 賮乇賵丿 丌賲丿貨 賴賲趩賳丕賳 讴賴 爻丕蹖賴 蹖 丕蹖賳 亘丕賱 乇賵蹖 賲蹖丿丕賳貙 爻賳诏蹖賳賿 鬲丕亘 賲蹖禺賵乇丿貙 賴賲賴 蹖 賲卮鬲乇蹖賴丕 爻乇丕爻蹖賲賴貙 丕夭 賴乇 丿賵 乇爻鬲賵乇丕賳 亘蹖乇賵賳 夭丿賳丿貙 賵 賴乇 讴爻蹖 讴賴 賲卮睾賵賱 鬲賲丕卮丕蹖 丌賳 亘賵丿貙 亘丕 毓噩賱賴 丕夭 丕蹖賳爻賵 亘賴 丌賳爻賵 賲蹖乇賮鬲貙 賵 蹖丕 亘賴 噩丕蹖蹖讴賴 蹖讴 賱丨馗賴 倬蹖卮 丕蹖爻鬲丕丿賴 亘賵丿 亘乇賲蹖诏卮鬲貙 趩賵賳 亘丕賱 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕賳丿賵賱蹖 睾賵賱 丌爻丕 鬲丕亘 賲蹖禺賵乇丿貙 賵 丌賳 賴丕 乇丕 丿賵丕賳 丿賵丕賳 丿乇 噩賴鬲 賲禺丕賱賮蹖 讴賴 诏賲丕賳 賲蹖乇賮鬲 丿乇 丌賳 賱丨馗賴 爻賯賵胤 讴賳丿 賲蹖乇丕賳丿貙 賵 丿乇 鬲賲丕賲 丕蹖賳 賲丿鬲 氐丿丕蹖 爻丕蹖卮 賳丕賱丕賳蹖 丕夭 丌賳 亘蹖乇賵賳 賲蹖丌賲丿 讴賴 賱丨馗賴 賱丨馗賴 亘蹖卮鬲乇 賲蹖卮丿貨 亘毓丿 賳丕诏賴丕賳 爻賯賵胤 讴乇丿 賵 丿乇 亘丕睾 讴賱蹖爻丕蹖 噩丕賲毓 禺乇丿 卮丿.禄貨
賳賲賵賳賴 丿蹖诏乇: 芦...貨 爻乇亘丕夭 丌賳噩丕 丿乇丕夭 讴卮蹖丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 賲賳 乇賵亘乇賵蹖卮 丿乇丕夭 讴卮蹖丿賴 亘賵丿賲.貨 丿賴丕賳賴 蹖 鬲賮賳诏 乇丕 乇賵蹖 賯賱亘卮 诏匕丕卮鬲賲.貨 乇丕爻鬲 賵 趩倬 乇丕 亘丕 賴賲 賯丕鬲蹖 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿賲貙 丕賲丕 亘丕 丕賲鬲丨丕賳 讴乇丿賳 丕蹖賳 丿爻鬲 賵 亘毓丿 丌賳 蹖讴蹖 丿乇 賲賵乇丿 丕賲讴丕賳 賳賵卮鬲賳貙 鬲賵丕賳爻鬲賲 賲卮讴賱賲 乇丕 丨賱 讴賳賲.貨 亘賱賴貙 丨丕賱丕 鬲賮賳诏 乇丕 乇賵蹖 賯賱亘 爻乇亘丕夭 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿賲 鬲丕 丿蹖诏乇 賮乇蹖丕丿 賳夭賳丿貙 鬲丕 丿蹖诏乇 賴賲蹖賳 胤賵乇 鬲賵蹖 讴賱賴 丕賲 賳讴賵亘丿.貨 賲丕卮賴 乇丕 趩讴丕賳丿賲.貨 鬲蹖乇蹖 乇賴丕 卮丿 賵 丌鬲卮蹖 讴賴 鬲丕 丕毓賲丕賯 乇賮鬲賴 亘賵丿貙 蹖賵賳蹖賮賵乇賲 丕賵 乇丕 爻賵夭丕賳丿.貨 賲蹖鬲賵丕賳爻鬲賲 亘賵蹖 倬賳亘賴 賵 倬卮賲 爻賵禺鬲賴 乇丕 丨爻 讴賳賲貙 丕賲丕 爻乇亘丕夭 丕蹖賳亘丕乇 亘丕 氐丿丕蹖 亘賱賳丿鬲乇蹖 夭賳卮 乇丕貙 賲丕丿乇 亘趩賴 賴丕蹖卮 乇丕貙 賮乇蹖丕丿 讴乇丿貙 賵 亘丕 卮鬲丕亘 亘蹖卮鬲乇蹖 丿乇 噩丕蹖卮 鬲讴丕賳 禺賵乇丿貙 丕賳诏丕乇 讴賴 丕蹖賳賴丕 賯丿賲賴丕蹖 丌禺乇 亘賵丿賳丿 讴賴 亘毓丿卮 亘丕睾 丕爻鬲 賵 亘毓丿 丕夭 丌賳 禺丕賳賴貙 禺丕賳賴 丕蹖 讴賴 毓夭蹖夭鬲乇丕賳卮 丿乇 丌賳 夭賳丿诏蹖 賲蹖讴賳賳丿.禄貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 24/04/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
November 4, 2023
It is the last days of the WWII. The story is about the observations of the young Milos Hrma, an apprentice signalman for a railway station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia and his becoming an unlikely hero by fighting his own war against the Nazis.
This is my second book by Hrabal, which made me better to appreciate his style of writing. His books read like a drunk uncle would tell a story that has no beginning; a story both humorous and serious, in which the present jumps back to the past and back again; sometimes it verges on ramblings and often it hits upon an important subject.
This is my second book by Hrabal, which made me better to appreciate his style of writing. His books read like a drunk uncle would tell a story that has no beginning; a story both humorous and serious, in which the present jumps back to the past and back again; sometimes it verges on ramblings and often it hits upon an important subject.
December 29, 2020
The novel I read before this one was a short work translated from German, and this too is a short novel that I read in translation, this time from Czech. It鈥檚 set in the early months of 1945, in German occupied Czechoslovakia. Our lead character, Milo拧 Hrma, is an unhappy young man who is training to be a 鈥渢rain dispatcher鈥�, which seems to be what鈥檚 known in Britain as a railway signalman. As the novel opens, Hrma has just gone back to work after a suicide attempt which followed his first intimate encounter with his girlfriend, during which our young railwayman let off steam too early. He feels humiliated about this and worries that he isn鈥檛 a 鈥渞eal man鈥�. He鈥檚 also neurotic about the townsfolk, thinking that they are always watching him at work.
Most of the book is a slightly strange mix of farce and misery. There鈥檚 quite a bit of ribald humour around the amorous escapades of Hrma鈥檚 colleague, Hubi膷ka, although I can鈥檛 say as I laughed at any of it. The war is something that is talked about or which takes place at a distance, but which occasionally makes fleeting appearances at the station in the form of the trains that charge through. There is though a sudden change of mood during the last chapter, where the author delivers a powerful and memorable ending. That pushed my overall rating up. 3.5 stars rounded up to four.
Most of the book is a slightly strange mix of farce and misery. There鈥檚 quite a bit of ribald humour around the amorous escapades of Hrma鈥檚 colleague, Hubi膷ka, although I can鈥檛 say as I laughed at any of it. The war is something that is talked about or which takes place at a distance, but which occasionally makes fleeting appearances at the station in the form of the trains that charge through. There is though a sudden change of mood during the last chapter, where the author delivers a powerful and memorable ending. That pushed my overall rating up. 3.5 stars rounded up to four.
August 19, 2018
Closely Watched Trains is a slender but tightly and skillfully written novella. There is not one superfluous word or allusion. Its economy of expression, darkly spiced with humor, is in sharp contrast to the seriousness of its intent 鈥� an anthem for doomed youth set in German occupied Czechoslovakia in 1945.
Bohumil Hrabal once worked as a railway laborer and this story about Milos Hrma, a 22-year-old apprentice railway dispatcher, seems to draw richly on his experience. Milos is a troubled young man who worries excessively about his manhood, which he most wishes to demonstrate toward Masha, his lady love. While he watches trains as part of his job, he thinks people are watching him. Milos behaves as if life is not worth living and Hrabal captures his despair with gentle lyricism. Yet it is quite clear that Milos wants above all to stay alive and show the world he is truly a man.
Life post World War II is bleak and Milos who watches the trains registers with his keen eye fragments of shattered lives in the carriages: blood stains, glass on the floor, a long bandage, a child鈥檚 striped ball, ailing or dead cattle. On the close surveillance medical trains, he feels a pang when he sees wounded soldiers who are boys his age or younger. Here is a poignant description: 鈥楢nd in this mobile sick-bay at which I was gazing, the strangest thing was the human eyes, the eyes of all those wounded soldiers. As though that agony there at the front, the agony they had inflicted on others and which others now were afflicting on them, had turned them into different people... They all peered through the windows into the dull countryside so attentively, with such childlike earnestness, as though they were passing through paradise itself, as though in my little station they saw a jewel-box.鈥� All this does not detract Milos from the beauty around him: the palpitating stars, radiant night, and crackling of frozen snow. Hrabal writes beautifully.
There is also in this novella a zest for life, a frivolity that is welcome and takes the edge off the harsh realities. This centers on Dispatcher Hubicka, Milos' immediate supervisor, whose romp with a sexy telegraphist makes him a celebrity and envy of the town. Milos looks upon Hubicka as an ideal, and that ironically is his undoing.
I felt tenderly toward Milos who is given to solitude. He is a young man with a whole life laid before him. He has no lofty ambition. His needs are primal. But it seems he is predestined for a mission he would not want to be part of if he could only anticipate the cost to himself.
This tiny but powerful book brings to the fore the pathos of war. Soldiers on opposing sides are just sons of mothers who cannot rest until their children are home safe. Time and again, this shared humanity is obliterated in war times and brought to awareness only too late.
Read Closely Watched Trains. Gravity and frivolity dwell side by side in unimaginable harmony.
Bohumil Hrabal once worked as a railway laborer and this story about Milos Hrma, a 22-year-old apprentice railway dispatcher, seems to draw richly on his experience. Milos is a troubled young man who worries excessively about his manhood, which he most wishes to demonstrate toward Masha, his lady love. While he watches trains as part of his job, he thinks people are watching him. Milos behaves as if life is not worth living and Hrabal captures his despair with gentle lyricism. Yet it is quite clear that Milos wants above all to stay alive and show the world he is truly a man.
Life post World War II is bleak and Milos who watches the trains registers with his keen eye fragments of shattered lives in the carriages: blood stains, glass on the floor, a long bandage, a child鈥檚 striped ball, ailing or dead cattle. On the close surveillance medical trains, he feels a pang when he sees wounded soldiers who are boys his age or younger. Here is a poignant description: 鈥楢nd in this mobile sick-bay at which I was gazing, the strangest thing was the human eyes, the eyes of all those wounded soldiers. As though that agony there at the front, the agony they had inflicted on others and which others now were afflicting on them, had turned them into different people... They all peered through the windows into the dull countryside so attentively, with such childlike earnestness, as though they were passing through paradise itself, as though in my little station they saw a jewel-box.鈥� All this does not detract Milos from the beauty around him: the palpitating stars, radiant night, and crackling of frozen snow. Hrabal writes beautifully.
There is also in this novella a zest for life, a frivolity that is welcome and takes the edge off the harsh realities. This centers on Dispatcher Hubicka, Milos' immediate supervisor, whose romp with a sexy telegraphist makes him a celebrity and envy of the town. Milos looks upon Hubicka as an ideal, and that ironically is his undoing.
I felt tenderly toward Milos who is given to solitude. He is a young man with a whole life laid before him. He has no lofty ambition. His needs are primal. But it seems he is predestined for a mission he would not want to be part of if he could only anticipate the cost to himself.
This tiny but powerful book brings to the fore the pathos of war. Soldiers on opposing sides are just sons of mothers who cannot rest until their children are home safe. Time and again, this shared humanity is obliterated in war times and brought to awareness only too late.
Read Closely Watched Trains. Gravity and frivolity dwell side by side in unimaginable harmony.
Read
December 28, 2018My last book of the year and read under less than ideal circumstances, to-wit: christmas stuff. So six days to read 85 pages, with a lot of entertainment and responsibility swirling around. I probably missed the larger import, but I did not miss one of the greatest endings of all time.
December 18, 2020
Tomorrow I鈥檓 going back on duty. Again I shall stand by the double track in my little station, where all the trains running from west to east are signalized by odd numbers, according to the schedule, and all the trains from west to east by even numbers
Milos Hrma, a young man training to be a railroad dispatcher in a small Czech town close to the German border in the year 1945, is going back on duty after a three month hiatus, following a failed suicide attempt.
What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age?
A lot, apparently! Milos is a sensitive soul, crying over the maltreatment of animals passing through the station on their way to the slaughterhouse. He is witnessing the turning tide of the war, with more trains carrying casualties heading back to Germany while heavily guarded, secretive munitions trains are heading towards the ever approaching frontline.
Most of all, Milos is worried about his maturity, about being accepted by his peers and about doing his job properly. In his family, there is a long tradition of the men being regarded as parasites by the neighbours: his great-grandfather was crippled very young in a conflict in Prague, and lived a long life on his pension, drinking and laughing at his hard-working peers; his grandfather joined the circus and became a hypnotist and died in a futile attempt to stop the invasion of his homeland by Panzer tanks by the power of his mind alone; his father got his pension early in life after working hard as a train conductor and is now running a scrapyard.
Milos, and his mother, are very proud of his brand-new uniform, although his dispatch mentor and his station master are hardly suitable as role models. Mr. Lansky grows pigeons in the back of the station, and at feeding time he stretches out his arms like a Christ figure, to be covered in fluttering wings. Mr Hubicka is a libertine and a non-conformist, infamous all over the railway line for a misuse of official stamps
Not to make a long story of it, they were on night duty together, and Dispatcher Hubicka bowled Virginia over, and then turned up her skirt and printed all our station stamps, one after another, all over our telegraphist鈥檚 backside. Even the date stamp he stuck on there! But in the morning, when Virginia got home, her mother read all those stamps printed on her, and came running here immediately, threatening to complain to the Gestapo!
Milos Hrma鈥檚 insecurities are exacerbated as soon as he falls in love with a fellow apprentice, the vivacious Masha. An incident involving what Milos euphemistically calls 鈥榬ubbing the velvet off your antlers鈥� that came to a conclusion in a precocious manner is in fact the primary cause of his suicide attempt.
Now, as one of those closely supervised military transports is scheduled to pass through their little station, Milos Hrma has the chance to prove that he is both a man and a patriot, as underground agents plan to sabotage it. Salvation may come from the hands of a beautiful woman symbolically named Victoria Freie.
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This is a very short novel / longish novella, but its length has very little to do with its artistic value. Bohumil Hrabal has the poetic touch that can speak volumes in the space of two heartbeats, using symbols and iconic imagery to fill in the gaps in the facts. A carton airplane used as a background prop in a photo studio where Milos and Masha spend their first night together points out both to the power of dreams and to the destruction of hope when it is blown to pieces in a bombardment.
The horror of war comes through not in accounts of battles or in the number of casualties, but in details of the aftermath, as witnessed by Milos on the trains that pass through his station and, in one case, in the eyes of survivors from the carpet-bombing of Dresden.
I looked into one compartment, everywhere it was the same. Shattered glass on the floor, combs, torn-off buttons, some with fabric still attached, a whole sleeve from a military coat, blood-stained pants, a handkerchief once wet with blood, scattered chessmen, a board for the dice game called 鈥楧on鈥檛 be angry, lad!鈥�, a round mirror, a mouth-organ, letters spattered with snow, a long bandage and a child鈥檚 striped ball. I picked up one letter, decorated with the print of a hobnailed military boot. Mein Lieber Schnucki Tucki! the letter began, and ended: Deine Luise. And the print of a girl鈥檚 lips. In a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out. On the floor lay two dead rooks.
Life and death are inseparable in those final days of a world conflict, and our hearts go out to Milos as he tries to rise up to the occasion and prove to himself he is a grown man. Whatever comedy the situations and the style of narration may warrant are always playing out in the shadow of that fast approaching train of doom.
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Over the summer, as I got onto Netflix for a couple of months, I was looking in vain for classic movies worth watching, until I saw Jiry Menzel鈥檚 1966 adaptation was available. The movie follows the novella very closely, which is not surprising, seeing as the author contributed directly to the screenplay. I would recommend either the film or the novella, or both together: it鈥檚 a memorable black comedy that deserves wider recognition.
Milos Hrma, a young man training to be a railroad dispatcher in a small Czech town close to the German border in the year 1945, is going back on duty after a three month hiatus, following a failed suicide attempt.
What should a young fellow like me have preying on his mind, at only twenty-two years of age?
A lot, apparently! Milos is a sensitive soul, crying over the maltreatment of animals passing through the station on their way to the slaughterhouse. He is witnessing the turning tide of the war, with more trains carrying casualties heading back to Germany while heavily guarded, secretive munitions trains are heading towards the ever approaching frontline.
Most of all, Milos is worried about his maturity, about being accepted by his peers and about doing his job properly. In his family, there is a long tradition of the men being regarded as parasites by the neighbours: his great-grandfather was crippled very young in a conflict in Prague, and lived a long life on his pension, drinking and laughing at his hard-working peers; his grandfather joined the circus and became a hypnotist and died in a futile attempt to stop the invasion of his homeland by Panzer tanks by the power of his mind alone; his father got his pension early in life after working hard as a train conductor and is now running a scrapyard.
Milos, and his mother, are very proud of his brand-new uniform, although his dispatch mentor and his station master are hardly suitable as role models. Mr. Lansky grows pigeons in the back of the station, and at feeding time he stretches out his arms like a Christ figure, to be covered in fluttering wings. Mr Hubicka is a libertine and a non-conformist, infamous all over the railway line for a misuse of official stamps
Not to make a long story of it, they were on night duty together, and Dispatcher Hubicka bowled Virginia over, and then turned up her skirt and printed all our station stamps, one after another, all over our telegraphist鈥檚 backside. Even the date stamp he stuck on there! But in the morning, when Virginia got home, her mother read all those stamps printed on her, and came running here immediately, threatening to complain to the Gestapo!
Milos Hrma鈥檚 insecurities are exacerbated as soon as he falls in love with a fellow apprentice, the vivacious Masha. An incident involving what Milos euphemistically calls 鈥榬ubbing the velvet off your antlers鈥� that came to a conclusion in a precocious manner is in fact the primary cause of his suicide attempt.
Now, as one of those closely supervised military transports is scheduled to pass through their little station, Milos Hrma has the chance to prove that he is both a man and a patriot, as underground agents plan to sabotage it. Salvation may come from the hands of a beautiful woman symbolically named Victoria Freie.
>>><<<>>><<<
This is a very short novel / longish novella, but its length has very little to do with its artistic value. Bohumil Hrabal has the poetic touch that can speak volumes in the space of two heartbeats, using symbols and iconic imagery to fill in the gaps in the facts. A carton airplane used as a background prop in a photo studio where Milos and Masha spend their first night together points out both to the power of dreams and to the destruction of hope when it is blown to pieces in a bombardment.
The horror of war comes through not in accounts of battles or in the number of casualties, but in details of the aftermath, as witnessed by Milos on the trains that pass through his station and, in one case, in the eyes of survivors from the carpet-bombing of Dresden.
I looked into one compartment, everywhere it was the same. Shattered glass on the floor, combs, torn-off buttons, some with fabric still attached, a whole sleeve from a military coat, blood-stained pants, a handkerchief once wet with blood, scattered chessmen, a board for the dice game called 鈥楧on鈥檛 be angry, lad!鈥�, a round mirror, a mouth-organ, letters spattered with snow, a long bandage and a child鈥檚 striped ball. I picked up one letter, decorated with the print of a hobnailed military boot. Mein Lieber Schnucki Tucki! the letter began, and ended: Deine Luise. And the print of a girl鈥檚 lips. In a corner there was an unlaced military boot grinning at me with its tongue lolling out. On the floor lay two dead rooks.
Life and death are inseparable in those final days of a world conflict, and our hearts go out to Milos as he tries to rise up to the occasion and prove to himself he is a grown man. Whatever comedy the situations and the style of narration may warrant are always playing out in the shadow of that fast approaching train of doom.
>>><<<>>><<<
Over the summer, as I got onto Netflix for a couple of months, I was looking in vain for classic movies worth watching, until I saw Jiry Menzel鈥檚 1966 adaptation was available. The movie follows the novella very closely, which is not surprising, seeing as the author contributed directly to the screenplay. I would recommend either the film or the novella, or both together: it鈥檚 a memorable black comedy that deserves wider recognition.
August 31, 2019
Gorka, crnohumorna, centralnoevropska, groteskna farsa rasko拧no talentovanog pisca.
Pripovedanje je najuverljivije kad je najneumerenije. (Razbacani 啪ivoti, gu啪va, klanica, seksualne frustracije, vozovi koji uvek kasne a dolaze na vreme, kanabei, mahagoni, o啪iljci.)
A nekada blesne lirsko iznena膽enje. Kao kada se svakoj pahuljici pripisuju minijaturne sekundare koje se pokre膰u sun膷evim svetlom.
Pripovedanje je najuverljivije kad je najneumerenije. (Razbacani 啪ivoti, gu啪va, klanica, seksualne frustracije, vozovi koji uvek kasne a dolaze na vreme, kanabei, mahagoni, o啪iljci.)
A nekada blesne lirsko iznena膽enje. Kao kada se svakoj pahuljici pripisuju minijaturne sekundare koje se pokre膰u sun膷evim svetlom.
September 10, 2021
Hats off to this quasi-debut by Czech writer Hrabal (1914-1997). In a short story, barely 70 pages, he perfectly captures the oppressive atmosphere of the end of the war, in the 1945 German-occupied Czechoslovakia. It takes a while before we get the different storylines together, a nice formal reference to the intertwining tracks in the train station where the main character, the 22-year-old Milos Hrma is a signalman, and where trains of the German occupier 鈥� most of them with wounded military - occasionally whiz through like shadows in the night. Milos' feverish monologue, with ironic and absurd touches, casually connects his coming-of-age (he has just had a failed suicide attempt) with the heroism of the resistance against the Nazis. Though not an overall success (a few loose ends), this short novel never falls into cheap rhetoric, on the contrary, the dark and slightly absurd atmosphere of the very condensed story manages to resonate. Quite extraordinary.
September 17, 2023
Clocking in at 84 pages, this novelette by Bohumil Hrabal belongs to the light flyweight category. But boy, does it pack a punch!
The story is told in first person by twenty-two-year-old Milos Hrma, a trainee dispatcher at a sleepy little railway station in Czechoslovakia at the fag end of World War II. Germans have already lost control of the air space, and they are halfway en route to losing the battle on the ground too. Milos is tasked with flagging of trains carrying soldiers, goods, ammunition and cattle to the war front - and those returning with the wounded and the dead. He is a virgin who suffered an erectile dysfunction while trying to copulate with his cousin Masha and subsequently attempted suicide - his main worry, in the midst of war, is getting laid.
The book is populated with weird characters. Milos's grandfather who tries to stop the Germans using hypnotism and gets crushed under a tank: the station master Lansky with his fetish for breeding pigeons: his wife who takes pleasure in the slow slaughter of rabbits: Dispatcher Hubicka who stamps the backside of the station telegraph operator Virginia with the station stamps, as forfeit for losing a game... The novel here straddles a fine line between black comedy and the absurd. But soon it gathers focus, as the visions get more and more disturbing (the descriptions of maimed cattle are especially distressing to read) and we can sense tragedy approaching.
The trains carrying ammunition to the front are the ones which have to be closely watched, to prevent sabotage. Ironically, the author forces us to watch all the trains closely, and all the misery and destruction they carry. Milos's initial sexual frustration evokes a sense of stasis, so his ultimate success to prove himself a man, when it comes linked to mass destruction, seems a fitting denouement: he loses his virginity and with it, himself. The ending is almost unspeakably cruel - yet somehow appropriate. This story can only end in this way.
Now I need to watch the film based on this book!
The story is told in first person by twenty-two-year-old Milos Hrma, a trainee dispatcher at a sleepy little railway station in Czechoslovakia at the fag end of World War II. Germans have already lost control of the air space, and they are halfway en route to losing the battle on the ground too. Milos is tasked with flagging of trains carrying soldiers, goods, ammunition and cattle to the war front - and those returning with the wounded and the dead. He is a virgin who suffered an erectile dysfunction while trying to copulate with his cousin Masha and subsequently attempted suicide - his main worry, in the midst of war, is getting laid.
The book is populated with weird characters. Milos's grandfather who tries to stop the Germans using hypnotism and gets crushed under a tank: the station master Lansky with his fetish for breeding pigeons: his wife who takes pleasure in the slow slaughter of rabbits: Dispatcher Hubicka who stamps the backside of the station telegraph operator Virginia with the station stamps, as forfeit for losing a game... The novel here straddles a fine line between black comedy and the absurd. But soon it gathers focus, as the visions get more and more disturbing (the descriptions of maimed cattle are especially distressing to read) and we can sense tragedy approaching.
The trains carrying ammunition to the front are the ones which have to be closely watched, to prevent sabotage. Ironically, the author forces us to watch all the trains closely, and all the misery and destruction they carry. Milos's initial sexual frustration evokes a sense of stasis, so his ultimate success to prove himself a man, when it comes linked to mass destruction, seems a fitting denouement: he loses his virginity and with it, himself. The ending is almost unspeakably cruel - yet somehow appropriate. This story can only end in this way.
Now I need to watch the film based on this book!
February 9, 2021
鈥�- Chamo-me Milos Hrma 鈥� disse eu titubeando. - Sabe, cortei os pulsos porque parece que sofro de ejacula莽茫o precoce. Mas n茫o 茅 verdade. 脡 verdade que murchei como um l铆rio no momento decisivo em que estava com a minha amiga, mas mesmo assim sou um homem.
- Nunca foi para a cama com uma mulher? 鈥� espantou-se Viktoria Freie.
- N茫o, s贸 tentei. 脡 por isso que lhe pe莽o que me aconselhe...
E a generosa tirolesa, 鈥渜ue tinha tanto um belo traseiro como uns belos peitos鈥� e que o conhece h谩 meia d煤zia de minutos, deslumbrada por tanto sex-appeal, trata logo de lhe saltar para cima e comprovar se ele 茅 ou n茫o homem. E 茅 basicamente nos desaires sexuais do protagonista e nas proezas sexuais de um seu colega que assenta a obra 鈥淐omboios Rigorosamente Vigiados鈥�, com uma ou outra manobra de sinaliza莽茫o na esta莽茫o e a passagem de comboios de soldados e vag玫es cheios de animais moribundos e putrefactos.
Tamb茅m eu murcho aos poucos quando leio Bohumil Hrabal, j谩 que os seus livros abrem em grande e v茫o perdendo o interesse e o sentido 脿 medida que progridem, conseguindo sempre incluir uma cena escatol贸gica. Se em 鈥淯ma Solid茫o Demasiado Ruidosa鈥� atira airosamente caca por todo o lado, aqui faz a proeza de encharcar uma personagem em urina. H谩 um nome para esta tara...
- Nunca foi para a cama com uma mulher? 鈥� espantou-se Viktoria Freie.
- N茫o, s贸 tentei. 脡 por isso que lhe pe莽o que me aconselhe...
E a generosa tirolesa, 鈥渜ue tinha tanto um belo traseiro como uns belos peitos鈥� e que o conhece h谩 meia d煤zia de minutos, deslumbrada por tanto sex-appeal, trata logo de lhe saltar para cima e comprovar se ele 茅 ou n茫o homem. E 茅 basicamente nos desaires sexuais do protagonista e nas proezas sexuais de um seu colega que assenta a obra 鈥淐omboios Rigorosamente Vigiados鈥�, com uma ou outra manobra de sinaliza莽茫o na esta莽茫o e a passagem de comboios de soldados e vag玫es cheios de animais moribundos e putrefactos.
Tamb茅m eu murcho aos poucos quando leio Bohumil Hrabal, j谩 que os seus livros abrem em grande e v茫o perdendo o interesse e o sentido 脿 medida que progridem, conseguindo sempre incluir uma cena escatol贸gica. Se em 鈥淯ma Solid茫o Demasiado Ruidosa鈥� atira airosamente caca por todo o lado, aqui faz a proeza de encharcar uma personagem em urina. H谩 um nome para esta tara...
October 18, 2017
"Mi dico, tanto i tedeschi sono matti.
Matti pericolosi.
Anche io ero un po鈥� matto, ma a danno mio, mentre i tedeschi sempre a danno degli altri."
Letteralmente il titolo sarebbe: "Treni acutamente seguiti".
Cos矛 veniva segnalata ai ferrovieri l'attenzione particolare che si doveva a dare a treni carichi di ogni sorta di arma e munizione.
Treni che dovevano avere sempre il semaforo verde: precedenza assoluta alla morte!
In un'amalgama di tragicit脿 e comicit脿 si racconta questa storia di cui il protagonista 茅 Milosh Hrma: un ferroviere apprendista che torna al suo lavoro dopo un tentativo di suicidio.
Tra personaggi stravaganti e situazioni grottesche Milosh vuole diventare uomo. Emblematicamente il nome della donna che porter脿 soddisfazione al ragazzo 猫 (Vittoria Libera..). e nel momento dell'orgasmo i piaceri del corpo si confondono e si fondono con i boati della bombe:
"Dresda brucia!"
Destini individuali e corso della Storia s'intrecciano e rendono protagonista un giovane ferroviere che non vuole pi霉 proteggere la morte che passa sferragliando sulle rotaie ma, per una volta, fermarla e cantare un inno alla vita.
Matti pericolosi.
Anche io ero un po鈥� matto, ma a danno mio, mentre i tedeschi sempre a danno degli altri."
Letteralmente il titolo sarebbe: "Treni acutamente seguiti".
Cos矛 veniva segnalata ai ferrovieri l'attenzione particolare che si doveva a dare a treni carichi di ogni sorta di arma e munizione.
Treni che dovevano avere sempre il semaforo verde: precedenza assoluta alla morte!
In un'amalgama di tragicit脿 e comicit脿 si racconta questa storia di cui il protagonista 茅 Milosh Hrma: un ferroviere apprendista che torna al suo lavoro dopo un tentativo di suicidio.
Tra personaggi stravaganti e situazioni grottesche Milosh vuole diventare uomo. Emblematicamente il nome della donna che porter脿 soddisfazione al ragazzo 猫 (Vittoria Libera..). e nel momento dell'orgasmo i piaceri del corpo si confondono e si fondono con i boati della bombe:
"Dresda brucia!"
Destini individuali e corso della Storia s'intrecciano e rendono protagonista un giovane ferroviere che non vuole pi霉 proteggere la morte che passa sferragliando sulle rotaie ma, per una volta, fermarla e cantare un inno alla vita.
August 6, 2017
This leaves you speechless. It resembled a journey to my own soul.
June 25, 2017
This is a surprising book. Not quite the grandiosity of I Served the King of England or the charm of Too Loud a Solitude, yet there is something different about this slender book of 84 pages. So unobtrusive is this book, that you might miss it on a shelf full of bigger books. Yet for a short book, it speaks volumes.
Bohumil Hrabal is a great story teller. His inimitable style is evident from the first page. It is cheeky, hilarious, irreverent, naughty and ribald. But it is not all lightheartedness and he can give his tales a darker, more somber spin. The amazing thing is how he hides the gruesomeness amidst the frivolity, presenting catastrophic events innocuously and how he manages to change the tone of the book without being noticed.
Set in 1945 in a Czech town, the Germans are on the back foot, but they are still making their presence felt. These German, closely watched trains, still pass through the train station and are given priority in passage. We follow the exploits of the station staff. The central figure is the hapless Milo Hrma, an unassuming, insecure young man with an embarrassing family history. He works at the station along with larger than life characters, including the pigeon-covered station master Lansky, the randy, libidinous dispatcher Hubicka, the floozy telegraphist Virginia and the conductress Masha. Despite their foibles and absurdities, there is a touch of longing and vulnerability which makes them human and worthy of empathy.
Tucked between the hilarious tales were dark episodes. Two events stood out in particular.
Amongst his books, this novel is possibly Hrabal鈥檚 most powerful statement about war. While the characters express anti-German sentiment, Hrabal adds a different dimension to it. Juxtaposed in the background was the Allied devastation of Dresden. But now, as these Dresdeners came flocking here out of their city, I could no longer pity them, nobody could pity them, except they themselves. And those Germans knew it. Now one of them burst out weeping, in such a strange way, almost cooing, like the station-master鈥檚 pigeons when the raid disturbed them, and then his weeping became human, and only then did his body relax. And the other Germans began to blow their noses, and then they all burst into tears, every one in a different way, but fundamentally this was human crying, lamentation over what had happened.
Then a twist in the plot.
鈥漇ollten Sie am Arsch zu Hause sitzen.鈥�
Bohumil Hrabal is a great story teller. His inimitable style is evident from the first page. It is cheeky, hilarious, irreverent, naughty and ribald. But it is not all lightheartedness and he can give his tales a darker, more somber spin. The amazing thing is how he hides the gruesomeness amidst the frivolity, presenting catastrophic events innocuously and how he manages to change the tone of the book without being noticed.
Set in 1945 in a Czech town, the Germans are on the back foot, but they are still making their presence felt. These German, closely watched trains, still pass through the train station and are given priority in passage. We follow the exploits of the station staff. The central figure is the hapless Milo Hrma, an unassuming, insecure young man with an embarrassing family history. He works at the station along with larger than life characters, including the pigeon-covered station master Lansky, the randy, libidinous dispatcher Hubicka, the floozy telegraphist Virginia and the conductress Masha. Despite their foibles and absurdities, there is a touch of longing and vulnerability which makes them human and worthy of empathy.
Tucked between the hilarious tales were dark episodes. Two events stood out in particular.
Amongst his books, this novel is possibly Hrabal鈥檚 most powerful statement about war. While the characters express anti-German sentiment, Hrabal adds a different dimension to it. Juxtaposed in the background was the Allied devastation of Dresden. But now, as these Dresdeners came flocking here out of their city, I could no longer pity them, nobody could pity them, except they themselves. And those Germans knew it. Now one of them burst out weeping, in such a strange way, almost cooing, like the station-master鈥檚 pigeons when the raid disturbed them, and then his weeping became human, and only then did his body relax. And the other Germans began to blow their noses, and then they all burst into tears, every one in a different way, but fundamentally this was human crying, lamentation over what had happened.
Then a twist in the plot.
鈥漇ollten Sie am Arsch zu Hause sitzen.鈥�
February 23, 2016
Originally written in Czech. I have a suspicion this translation by Edith Pargeter lost a lot, but it is still good enough for me for a perfect GR score. DREAMLIKE, it there鈥檚 a word for it. Reading it gave me this experience: when disparate dreams come in sequence at night, each one understood completely as they pass before the eyes which open when one is asleep, each dream segment seeking to connect with the others, then backing off, one at a time, as if saying goodbye, yet making wordless promises to return when your need to remember comes. Then you wake up with the residual memory of your experience. And in those lazy moments between sleep and complete wakefulness you say to yourself that you will remember this dream, so funny, or sad, or strange. Your father, long gone, laughing at some joke, flashing his small, rotten teeth in glee. What could this mean? You will tell your wife later鈥ut then you forget.
Imagine if you could write like Bohumil Hrabal and make your readers feel as if they are WATCHING such dreams. They are no longer the dreamers, but an audience. Probably even the dreamt of, watching themselves live inside other people鈥檚 subconscious, seeing themselves reflected in a mirror.
Imagine if you could write like Bohumil Hrabal and make your readers feel as if they are WATCHING such dreams. They are no longer the dreamers, but an audience. Probably even the dreamt of, watching themselves live inside other people鈥檚 subconscious, seeing themselves reflected in a mirror.
April 27, 2025
Short novella exquisitely written, both funny and tragic. A shame that there was not more as the characters and situation are both one that you would be happy to spend much more time with.
January 19, 2024
Short and sweet coming-of-age story about a boy who, during the final stages of the second world war, works as a station guard at an isolated train station with his two colleagues. He details the comings and goings of various trains, those including goods, cattle and people. He tells us about his life in sporadic bursts and usually out of chronological order (which can occasionally be jarring), especially relating his trials and tribulations regarding losing his virginity and the failed suicide attempt that followed his premature ejaculation. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he endeavours to find a way to avoid working for a living and though not as successful as his forebears, he feels that he is ultimately doing a pretty good job of it.
The writing is crisp and clear, never too flowery or dense, and it goes by at a pace. The final chapter detailing his encounter with a German soldier has a great deal of pathos to it and leaves us with a feeling that Milos has never really been given a chance to live. Finally losing his virginity to an older woman who, more than anything, is simply doing him a favour, does, at least, give him a sense of becoming a man.
I would class this very short novella as more charming than profound. It's definitely worth a read and explores various themes such as war, loss, wasted potential, and heroism but never anything more than that. It's a gentle and thoughtful window into a time that's long gone.
The writing is crisp and clear, never too flowery or dense, and it goes by at a pace. The final chapter detailing his encounter with a German soldier has a great deal of pathos to it and leaves us with a feeling that Milos has never really been given a chance to live. Finally losing his virginity to an older woman who, more than anything, is simply doing him a favour, does, at least, give him a sense of becoming a man.
I would class this very short novella as more charming than profound. It's definitely worth a read and explores various themes such as war, loss, wasted potential, and heroism but never anything more than that. It's a gentle and thoughtful window into a time that's long gone.
July 31, 2016
A coming-of-age story of a young railwayman in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) was a Czech writer said to be the greatest Czech novelist of the 20th century. Previous to this book, the only popular writer I have read was Milan Kundera (born 1929). In this book's back cover, this is what Kundera says about the book:
The story opens with Milo拧 Hrma enjoying his new railway man uniform. It is his first day at work as a predecessor of his father who has just retired as a railwayman. He is still a virgin and so he is being picked on by his older co-worker, train dispatcher Hubi膷ka. He has a crush on conductor M谩拧a but when they make out, he ejaculated prematurely. So Hubi膷ka arranges for a Viktoria Freie, a Resistance spy to teach Milo拧 how to properly make love to a woman.
All these with Hitler's army and the repression of Czechoslovakia serving as a backdrop. I've read many books about the Holocaust including the 1959 Gunter Grass' opus . Although I liked those books that directly tackle Holocaust, like Thomas Keneally's (4 stars), Ellie Wiesel's (4 stars), Primo Levi's (4 stars), etc., especially because of the movies too, I think I have read so many of them that I have in a way already have a solid idea on what when on in the concentration camps. So, if there is a novel that is set outside the concentration camp especially in the German occupied countries, it is a welcome relief.
What makes this book remarkable are the parts where the author concentrates on what's going on in the mind of his protagonist. The innocence of a young man who is idolizing this happy-go-lucky father and the sexual awakening is probably reflective of the countries that fall in Hitler's claw. Did countries at that time become disillusioned as they became powerless? This novel seems to be telling me that. This is something similar to the young people in the Philippines when the Americans or Japanese colonized the country during the tumultuous World War II.
I agree with Wiki that Hrabal is a great novelist. This book is just thin and short but it is huge in message and can be interpreted in so many ways that if you don't find it great, I am not sure which book you can classify as that.
"an incredible union of earthly humor and baroque imagination.". Although this is true, I think Kundera's oversimplification of the novel's central idea does not do enough justice to what this book is all about.
The story opens with Milo拧 Hrma enjoying his new railway man uniform. It is his first day at work as a predecessor of his father who has just retired as a railwayman. He is still a virgin and so he is being picked on by his older co-worker, train dispatcher Hubi膷ka. He has a crush on conductor M谩拧a but when they make out, he ejaculated prematurely. So Hubi膷ka arranges for a Viktoria Freie, a Resistance spy to teach Milo拧 how to properly make love to a woman.
All these with Hitler's army and the repression of Czechoslovakia serving as a backdrop. I've read many books about the Holocaust including the 1959 Gunter Grass' opus . Although I liked those books that directly tackle Holocaust, like Thomas Keneally's (4 stars), Ellie Wiesel's (4 stars), Primo Levi's (4 stars), etc., especially because of the movies too, I think I have read so many of them that I have in a way already have a solid idea on what when on in the concentration camps. So, if there is a novel that is set outside the concentration camp especially in the German occupied countries, it is a welcome relief.
What makes this book remarkable are the parts where the author concentrates on what's going on in the mind of his protagonist. The innocence of a young man who is idolizing this happy-go-lucky father and the sexual awakening is probably reflective of the countries that fall in Hitler's claw. Did countries at that time become disillusioned as they became powerless? This novel seems to be telling me that. This is something similar to the young people in the Philippines when the Americans or Japanese colonized the country during the tumultuous World War II.
I agree with Wiki that Hrabal is a great novelist. This book is just thin and short but it is huge in message and can be interpreted in so many ways that if you don't find it great, I am not sure which book you can classify as that.
August 16, 2013
Actually, 3.5 stars...
Set in the final year of the Second World War, Ost艡e sledovan茅 vlaky weaves together the rather exaggerated personal story of a young apprentice for the Czech national train company (embarrassed by premature ejaculation, he tries to commit suicide; his grandfather tries to stop the invading German army solely with his mental powers of suggestion - his family has to go to Prague to recover the skull from the tread of a tank; he beds a beautiful complete stranger (a German, at that) on the station master's couch merely by telling her that he is virgin) with the bits of the greater tragedy which can be seen from the platforms of a provincial train station. Hrabal (1914鈥�1997) initially employs rapidly changing flashbacks whose pace slows as the broadly humorous strand of events at the station house converges with the tragic and ominous strand of events occurring in the outside world to meld into an event in which participate black humor, sentimentality, tragedy and the absurd. Though I find aspects of the structure of this novella to be more imposed than organic, it is remarkable what a range of life Hrabal manages to fit into 91 pages...
Set in the final year of the Second World War, Ost艡e sledovan茅 vlaky weaves together the rather exaggerated personal story of a young apprentice for the Czech national train company (embarrassed by premature ejaculation, he tries to commit suicide; his grandfather tries to stop the invading German army solely with his mental powers of suggestion - his family has to go to Prague to recover the skull from the tread of a tank; he beds a beautiful complete stranger (a German, at that) on the station master's couch merely by telling her that he is virgin) with the bits of the greater tragedy which can be seen from the platforms of a provincial train station. Hrabal (1914鈥�1997) initially employs rapidly changing flashbacks whose pace slows as the broadly humorous strand of events at the station house converges with the tragic and ominous strand of events occurring in the outside world to meld into an event in which participate black humor, sentimentality, tragedy and the absurd. Though I find aspects of the structure of this novella to be more imposed than organic, it is remarkable what a range of life Hrabal manages to fit into 91 pages...
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