A great season

A great season. A novel about the most important things in life (Czech Prima sezóna ) was published in 1975 by Josef Škvorecký in the exile publishing house for Czech literature 68 Publishers in Toronto . The German translation was published in 1997.
The action takes place in 1942 in the north-east Bohemian town of Kostelec in the then Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the last two years of high school of the narrator Daniel ( Danny ) Smiřický, the author's alter ego , who is the central figure in four other novels. This is about the numerous but repeatedly failing attempts of the narrator to make his first experiences as a man and lover with one of the girls he admires in a season between winter and autumn.

content

The story of Danny takes place in his last two years of school. Since Škvorecký graduated from high school in Náchod in 1943 and Kostelec, as in the novel Feiglinge, can easily be recognized as its image, it can be assumed that the transfer to the last class described in the novel will take place in autumn 1942. The plot is chronologically structured in six chapters, begins in winter and ends in autumn: the narrator wants one of the girls - all of whom are younger high school students - whom he has known for a long time or is just getting to know and each of whom he adores and desires to have his first sexual experience with the opposite sex. One after the other or in parallel or repeatedly, the six girls, four of whom are sisters, become his favorites.

"The great season begins: a winter story"

Irena and Marie both have steadfast friends. Nonetheless, Danny thinks he can calculate his chances with them because he does not see either of the two young men as an equal and both Irena and Marie let him understand that they like him. First of all, he's most successful at Irena. He taught her a hickey on her neck when she took him into the living room one winter afternoon. From the house opposite, both are watched by Marie, who is visiting her aunt there. She notifies Irena's father, who comes home immediately and finishes the rendezvous arranged behind his back. When he later tries to approach Marie, she behaves dismissively. This is underlined by the white fur hood on her blue winter coat, in which he recognizes the sign of victory again and again when she lets him stand and turns her back to him.

"The great season continues: The May Witch"

Danny is blown away by the friendliness of a girl he meets on the street and whom he has never seen. She visits her uncle, a conductor, in Kostelec after her father clashed with the National Socialists in Linz and ended up in a concentration camp . Karla-Marie Weberová fascinates him so much that he begins to doubt his senses because he always believes he can perceive something new and contradicting her. With Faustian associations she gets him to write her an oath of love with his blood for the month of May. His jazz fans are thrilled when she shows up in their samples and the piano a Bach - Fugue begins to play. One after the other, they record the melody and, in the manner of Jacques Loussier, turn it into a “Play Bach” piece that inspires them all. He can teach her a hickey too. But his sensual doubts are suddenly cleared up when he learns that he has dealt with a pair of twins who play games with him and are also related to Irena's family.

"The great season is stalling: Charleston behind bars"

He made another acquaintance in May, namely with Kristýna, who comes from a neighboring town and is engaged as an amateur actress for the May show " The Spring Sun" . She is supposed to dance a minuet in a Rococo costume while wearing a crinoline . The minuet is supposed to become a Charleston , so she has to gather her skirt and her beautiful white stockinged legs with rose-trimmed black garters can be seen in the wire cage of the crinoline. The performance becomes a success under the deception of the Reich German cultural authorities. Danny cannot keep the appointment with Kristýna because he has to go to a secret meeting with a friend in the rectory: In order to save a young Czech-Jewish couple from persecution, their wedding date has to be postponed so that the protectorate legislation for the marriages that have taken place is still does not apply. To write the two according to the dictates of the pastor all churches matrikel since 1923 new order is created for the upcoming inspection a deception free uniform typeface. When Danny tries to make up for the missed appointment in Kristýna's hometown, he clashes with her father, who tears his daughter away, threatens Danny and notifies the school administration.

"The great season reaches its climax: the view from the tower"

With a friend whom Irena wants to have painted, Danny devises a plan how he can arrange an unobserved meeting with Irena, especially since her boyfriend has gone to Prague. Instead, Irena gets her way and goes on a climbing tour with Danny on a nearby rock needle. During the ascent, a climbing hook came loose from the rock, so that the descent is actually impossible due to uncertainty. Climbing Irena falls because she cannot hold Danny to the rope from the top of the rock. She injures herself and can no longer move. Danny sees from above how Irena's friend approaches with a strange girl. The two listen to Irena and take care of her, while Danny rejoices on the top of the rock, because Irena has caught her boyfriend in obvious infidelity. But nothing will come of his chances, which are believed to be better. After her short hospital stay, Irena doesn't want to hear anything from him that her father supports.

"The great season is coming to an end: A boarding house for siblings"

Irena's one year younger sister is so devoted to Danny that he really notices her for the first time: she is pretty and almost as seductive as Irena. She has been in love with him for a long time and offers so little resistance that, with her consent, he resolves to sleep with her. Alena is cycling to visit relatives over the weekend on an alleged visit. Instead of staying there, she meets up with Danny, and the two of them look for a pension. The landlord, who gives them a room in which another pair of lovers was previously, and Danny still sells overpriced condoms, lets them register with their student IDs and teaches Alena's father. He immediately picks up his daughter and Danny in the car, shows himself to be quite composed towards Danny, but so strictly strict that Danny lets all hope go.

"The great season is over: The sad autumn blues"

After a repeat test in math, Danny will be promoted to the last grade in the fall. He meets Marie again, who is so friendly to him that he again calculates opportunities. When he and her seek shelter in his friend's hut in heavy rain, he drinks the strong rum tea that he had actually prepared for Marie to get her drunk. He drinks so much that he doesn't even know what he wants. Marie takes care of him, but leaves him and informs his parents about her brother.
On the weekends the band continues to make music, in Kostelec only for entertainment due to the protectorate requirements. But outside of German control, the young jazz musicians play to dance in Provodov, four kilometers away . Marie comes there to dance on an autumn Sunday, accompanied by Irena's friend Zdeněk Pivonka. In contrast, Irena appears with Marie's friend Franta Kočandrle. When Danny can dance with Marie during a break from play, he is pushed aside by her companion. For the first time he makes no secret of his disappointment, shows Marie his angry annoyance and leaves the room to cry. He only returns to the band on stage for the blues game. In the middle of the game, the clarinetist is whispered that his father was shot in German custody. Danny takes over his solo and continues to play for him.

subjects

"The most important things in life"

In 1988, Škvorecký described his understanding of reality, with which he encountered difficulties as a writer from the beginning: “In my ignorance, I did not know that simple realism is the last thing ideologically minded critics want. And in those days the great majority of critics were ideological. Your idea of ​​the object of writing - of the world and of people's lives - was a combination of idealizing and demonizing. They didn't like the rivalry. ”
Beyond the colloquial and difficult-to-translate phrases and conversations with Danny, Škvorecký allows all expressions of life to be right without contempt or branding, so that Andreas Breitenstein wrote in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in June 2000 about Danny's basic philanthropy speaks and explains that Škvorecký writes traditionally and unpretentiously without wanting to intimidate the reader through intellectual superstructure.
In the final passage of his novel, the author describes Danny's mood as follows: “Oh God! Damn it! Someone rammed me and a woman's pointed heel kicked my shin. Oh God! I turned around again, snaked my way between the dancing couples on the floor and ran quickly to the bathroom to cry. In the corridor, Leopold Váňa again belaboured the sad Rost'a: 'We have to try to explain to our people that ...' I disappeared in the toilet and peed for a very long time and sadly. My tears dripped into the gutter. The rain pelted pouringly against the stained window full of fly poop. Then we played a whole block of blues. (...) Even if the girls were so cruel, I still loved them. Or what. Or I was young. Or it was the rain. The fog. The sad autumn. The war through which everything came to a bad end ”(p. 268f.).

Small town, church and religion

“It was a beautiful city and a great life here” (p. 16). Between pages 20 to 229, the attributes “beautiful” and “wonderful” belong to Kostelec as “great” to “season”, but can also be combined with “sinful” at Kostelec (p. 42). Depending on the situation, they receive nuances that can certainly, but never finally, become sarcastic . Like the preceding the Roman motto of Nathaniel Hawthorne "Fine and graceful facts we understand best when they are transfigured by the distance" shows, it's the exiled author to the work-up of its consistently positive toned memories. Nonetheless, it is mentioned that half of the city's residents suffer from bronchitis because of the industrial fumes (p. 188).
On the one hand, Danny is surprised at how quickly things get around from his private life. His girl acquaintances, for example, are passed around as a list of 23 names that did not come from him (pp. 194, 247). On the other hand, he does not feel that this is dishonorable, as it can be with others, when the circumstances of their lost virginity are rumored (p. 146 f.). The allegation of lying or betrayal or the uncomfortable situations of being seen somewhere or lying for fear of loss of reputation and punishment in an emergency only to be discovered are a side effect of the life of Danny and his companions, which is subject to various controls.

The Catholic Church as an educational and supervisory authority is important to Danny's conscience, if not more central. But again and again the danger of unchastity and adultery and the practice of confession are brought to mind (pp. 39, 41, 104, 162). At the same time, Danny knows how to protect himself from too much leadership in his self-esteem by relying on Saint Ignatius as the patron saint of the ways out (p. 42) or by making God an ally of his desires if he has one for his success with girls in the church Lights the candle and God asks: "Dear God, make me get Irena or another pretty girl" (p. 17).
The Kostelec priests play an exemplary role with their demeanor towards the Germans, albeit to their detriment. Two have already been recalled or arrested for "anti-imperial statements". The last one puts everything at risk when he and Danny and his friend falsify the church registers for the sake of a woman of Jewish origin, which he gives the boys as pia fraus (Latin for “pious deception” or “white lie”) (144, 148, 157 ).

Youth in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 1942

For Danny the protectorate period is a “frosty fact”, “which most of the time I didn't think about” (p. 139), although the presence of the Germans as occupiers is registered from the start (p. 12). At a more externally determined, more dangerous level, the small-town control system is covered with requirements. Danny has an experience that does not endanger him, reminiscent of a Schwejkiade , when he has to have the laboriously translated Mairevue piece approved by Reich Commissioner Horst Hermann Kühl and draws his attention to the unsuccessful translation of a surrealist poem by Vítězslav Nezval , which, with the help of Reichskommissärs leads to a corruption (pp. 129–133), but will be presented in the original. Out

"In the office a triple jazz band plays to the dance
A river made of paper is full of blue flags
Carp, trout and blossoms of the trees
dance happily the Charleston."

becomes

“In the forest a brass band plays to the dance.
The blue river reflects the brown flags.
Boys and girls under the blooming trees
happily dance the folk country traders. "

jazz

Danny has his most reliable calm and reference point as a tenor saxophonist in a jazz band. They practice every other evening in "Port Artur", a restaurant that still exists in Náchod today. The following tracks are mentioned scattered throughout the plot: Dinah , Struttin ' , Muscat Ramble , Sweet Georgia Brown , Casa Loma Stomp , Some of These Days , Swingin' the Blues , Joe Turner , Everybody Loves My Baby , Tiger Rag , Blues in The Dark .

reception

Sigrid Löffler writes about Škvorecký that he could only move to Kostelec through literature, to love girls, to play in a jazz band, to annoy Czech compatriots, to provoke the Nazis. “The fact that his golden years in Kostelec coincide with the war and occupation years in Hitler's protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia cannot tarnish their shine for Škvorecký. On the contrary: threats and dangers give these youthful years a sharp thrill of adventure. "

Balduin Winter states that, given the narrator's failure in “ A Great Season ”, it is no wonder “that the question of love is the main question in Danny's life. It will remain so, without the sweet sufferings of love there would be no point in youth. The whole of life would have no meaning, because the big question accompanies Skvorecky's entire work. It is really wonderful to read in The Soul Engineer when, as a 50-year-old well-to-do professor at a Canadian university, he meets an Irena who reminds him of his childhood sweetheart, at least by name. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A great season. A novel about the most important things in life . Translated from the Czech by Marcela Euler, Deuticke: Vienna-Munich 1997; ISBN 3-216-30322-5 . - The page numbers refer to this edition.
2. ↑ = Náchod
3. ↑ In Sigrid Löffler's eyes, Kostelec / Náchod plays the role for Škvorecký that Novi Sad plays in Aleksandar Tišma's narrative . See Löffler on Škvorecký
4. ↑ text (Czech)
5. ↑ Walter Klier: Reference to the narrator Josef Škvorecký - "It was very interesting to live" , p. 274. In: Josef Škvorecký, Eine prima Saison , Vienna-Munich 1997, pp. 273–284.
6. ↑ Andreas Breitenstein: Heroes like us . In: Press review, p. 4 ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Photo from "Port Arthur"
8. ↑ Dinah on YouTube
9. ↑ Struttin ' on YouTube
10. ↑ Muscat Ramble on YouTube
11. ↑ Sweet Georgia Brown on YouTube
12. ↑ Casa Loma Stomp on YouTube
13. ↑ Some of these Days on YouTube
14. ↑ Swingin 'the Blues on YouTube
15. ↑ Joe Turner on YouTube
16. ↑ Everybody Loves My Baby on YouTube
17. ↑ Tiger Rag on YouTube
18. ↑ Blues in The Dark on YouTube
19. ↑ Löffler 1999
20. ^ B. Winter over Škvorecký