EAST AND WEST OR ABOUT RELATIVISM (CZECH FICTION IN 1963)

The contribution is dedicated to a jubilee of Rudolf Chmel. Based on the texts published in 1963 it deals with relational typology within Czech and Slovak cultural context: První sešit Směšných lásek (The First Book of Absurd Amours) by Milan Kundera, Legenda Emöke (The Legend Emöke) by Josefa Škvorecký a Hodina ticha (An Hour of Silence) by Ivan Klíma with a halfway house representing by his Slovak travel book Mezi třemi hranicemi (Among Three Boarders) from 1960. The difference between Slovak and Czech identity is a specific aesthetic task. The authors make their theme based on semantic differentiation on the pivot of cultural identity, ethnic and personal distinctions. All the texts signalize consciousness of natural connections (similarity), but also semantic scale of differentiation, which enables to make as a problem ideological and institutional convention and in the background to think about existential questions, typical for the 60-tieth. In the cultural studies ethnicity is considered to function in a level of local and global order. Ivan Klíma after an invocative travel book Mezi třemi hranicemi, in the novel Hodina ticha left the existential urgency of Slovak theme and he dealt with it in the ranks of exotic regionalism. Milan Kundera turns it into topographic information and a code of mythic paradigm, Josef Škvorecký receded from the topic of Hungarian-Gipsy soul. The study shows, how the position in the 60-tieth changed the position of Czech-Slovak cultural frame.