A Sketch of Johanides (looking back in time: 1995 – 2015)

The study is a special-occasion commentary reflecting on some of the productive interferential influences (also discussed elsewhere) which played a part in creating Johanides´s idiolect in the course of his work. The framework of the reflection is formed by motifs and topoi repeatedly exploited in prose and essay writing (interview, monologue, view) as well as text-forming techniques (use of an image as a inner-composition method, extension of and contrast to a word), which create the identity of the text as a whole. The context of the interpretation is provided by reflection on Johanides´s solution to the issue of the author´s engagement as participation in another person´s life and fortune in the ethical and esthetical context of after-war Modern in a close, declared contact with the humanocentric dimension of interpersonal relationships. The paper draws attention to the contribution of Johanides´s existentially situated narrative to modern historical prose and social essay writing and attempts to identify the particularities of the writer´s idiolect against a background of reflections on the Nouveau Roman and non-ideological writing style defined by Barthes.