Citation

Gnot A. Ceska Literatura 2020; 68(6): 655-676.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the novel Seventh Autobiography, writer Ota Filip established a wide range of strategies for using quotes from archival documents from the State Security Archive. The writer attempted to respond to public accusations of his collaboration with agents of Czechoslovak military intelligence in the 1950s when he betrayed his colleagues who were planning to escape to West Germany. In the late nineties this scandal led to the writer's son's suicide and forced Filip to write his autobiographical novel to deal with the burden of guilt. By using this quotation strategy the writer was able to reassess past events from the perspective of his current position to follow his personal and artistic development and redefine his identity following this chain of traumatic experiences. Quotation also allows us to follow the gradual interlinking of individual autobiographical motifs in wider structures and to observe the relations functioning between them, which enable the autobiographical space of the writer's literary work to be established. An important and simultaneous process in this context is the development of literary communication between the writer and the recipient of his novel. For the first one, this is an opportunity to share his personal experience and observe how it influences the process of dealing with the problematic past. The main goal of the article is to present the essential strategies for quoting from archival documents in the text of Seventh Autobiography. The author of the study particularly emphasizes the influence of quotation in the field of relations between the actual author of the literary text and the agents holding his security files in the past and the way the disproportion in accessibility of source material on the part of the recipient of the novel influences the process of literary communication. The final result of conducting analytical activities in these fields creates a broader picture of the writer's methods for dealing with his experiences. © 2020, Czech Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Language: cs

Keywords

autobiography; archive documents; literary communication; Ota Filip; quotation; Sedmý životopis (Seventh Autobiography); State Security