The Magic Realism of the Czech Republic

This blog is taking part in the Magic Realism Bloghop again this year. Last year I blogged about Franz Kafka's Prague. This year I want to talk about my experience as a British writer in the Czech Republic.

On the Magic Realism Books Facebook Group a few months ago someone asked how many of the members had connections with another country than that of their birth and many magic realism writers and readers replied that they had at least a foot in another country and culture. It seems I am not alone in being an expat writer - I do all my writing when I am in my Czech home and none when I am in England.

I suppose it should not come as a surprise that so many magic realists have a dual national or cross-cultural experience. One of the key characteristics of magic realism is that it often deals with a cultural duality, usually (but not exclusively) where an indigenous culture exists alongside a more dominant Western one.

How does that work in the context of Czech magic realism? It is obviously the case with Franz Kafka, who was Jewish in a then German-speaking Prague. But it is also the case with Czech culture too.

For three centuries after the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620's Czech culture was marginalized and oppressed. The ruling Hapsburgs operated a policy of Germanization in the country. Books in the Czech language were burned, and the language banished from schools and public administration. After a while only peasants spoke Czech, as anyone who wanted to get on had to speak German. When the Czech national revival began in the 19th century, nationalist writers looked not to the German-dominated towns and cities, but to the villages and farms of the countryside. Here they found the Czech language, storytelling and folklore still alive. One of the most famous of the folktale collectors was the woman whose portrait appears on the 500 czk note: Bozena Nemcova.

Nemcova's novel Grandmother (published in 1855) is set in one such small Bohemian village and the grandmother in the story is the fount of a lot of country lore and traditional wisdom. The book is considered a classic of Czech literature and was hugely influential on the burgeoning Czech national identity. Of course it has elements of magic realism. And it follows that so too does the Czech identity.

The Czechs are well known as being the most atheist people in Europe. But as I have discussed in previous posts they also have a liking for folktales and magic. The two aspects are not mutually exclusive. The Czech rejection of the Catholic Church is partly a rejection of the Church in its role as a tool of Austrian cultural repression; for example Jesuit Antonin Konias is said to have burnt 30,000 Czech language books. Czech enthusiasm for the Slavic and Celtic water, tree and house spirits is part of national identity.

No wonder as a writer of magic realism I love it here.

EU Referendum

I have been pondering whether to post about the British EU Referendum for several weeks. And now I have finally put fingers to keyboard. We bought our Czech house in 2004, so we are approaching the twelfth year of our Czech adventure. During those years I have continued to live in both countries, moving freely between the two, although I have spend the majority of my time in England with my husband. In 2007 I started this blog with the stated aim to help the British understand the Czechs and vice versa. So I would be failing if I did not post about the possible Brexit

What has triggered this post was a load of comments on a YouGov survey. One commentator said that the Remainers had to decide whether they were British or European, a view supported by other Brexiteers. My answer is I do not have to decide any such thing. One of the things I have learned over the last twelve years is that you can be both. Indeed you can have many identities. I am British and European, I even consider myself to be a little Czech. I am also English and British. When I spend time with my Australian friend, as I did last week, I am conscious we share a common heritage and Commonwealth identity. Even if we do leave the EU, I will still be European and proud of it. Because Europe is also about shared culture, history and view of the world, something my time with Czechs has made very aware of. In truth we have far more alike than different.

Here in the Czech Republic I am the outsider, the foreigner who might be accused of taking away an affordable home from young Czechs. I even have failed miserably to master the Czech language. And yet the Czechs have welcomed me. The leaders of Brexit say that EU citizens don't have to worry about being forced out. But I have no doubt that if the roles were reversed and I encountered from Czechs the levels of xenophobia and hostility expressed in those comments and in the press and media, I would seriously be thinking of selling up and leaving. I am sure the same is true of Czechs in the UK now. Even if the UK opts to Remain, I fear we have already done a lot of damage to the trust between our peoples.

One of the tragedies of this is the loss of benefits the Czech and other EU migrants bring to our country. I am not just talking about the lovely carer who comes every morning to help my frail elderly mother or my excellent Polish NHS dentist, but about the fact that mutual understanding is the best driver of trade and commerce. My blog promotes the Czech Republic and I know of plenty of Czechs who have returned to their homeland and continue to do business which is favourable to the UK.

As a historian I was struck by the total nonsense some of the commentators came out with. Over and over they kept talking about how we needed to make Britain great again, how we were better going it on our own, with (I could hardly believe it) lots of references to Dunkirk and our finest hour. This is all based on historical myth. There is no historic precedent for what is proposed. We have been in some sort of supra-national alliance – be it Empire, Commonwealth, or European Union for over three centuries. We were not alone after Dunkirk. Indeed Churchill's finest hour belongs not to the British but to the citizens of the British Empire and Commonwealth, and moreover he talks about the Czech, Polish, French and other nationals, who had come to Britain to fight. This myth of Britain standing alone does a disservice for all those who fought by our side in those dark hours and especially those that died. I have been researching the Czech RAF pilots for my next book and my admiration and gratitude to them is enormous.

When I first read those comments, I was angry – angry on behalf of the Czechs and on behalf of my son and the young people of his generation, who would be denied the chance to enjoy the freedom to live, travel and work anywhere in Europe. Now in retrospect I am sorry for the commentator and his narrow, backward-looking world views. I am sorry too to all those young Czechs living in the UK who find themselves subjected to those views.

A note about bias
I am sure if those commentators were to see this post, they would sneeringly dismiss me as being biased, of having a self interest in the result of the Referendum. And it is true that I am worried by a Leave Vote. My currency broker friend tells me the £ will collapse in the event of a Leave vote and I believe him (after all he will make money either way). I am also worried that the cost of living in the Czech Republic will rise to an extent that I will not be able afford to be here and really will have to choose between the UK and the Czech Republic. But that said, I was thinking about retiring anyway, I have lots of friends here who would invite me to stay, and the change in the exchange rate would mean I would get more £s for the sale of my Czech house. So my self interest works both ways.

Ride of the Kings, Vlcnov

I have been meaning to make the journey to South Moravia to see the Ride of the Kings for several years. This year I was determined to go and had even structured a tour to include the Ride. When that tour was cancelled, I decided I would go anyway and took my friend Maggie.

I really didn't have much idea what to expect. I knew the Ride of the Kings was a traditional celebration which had received UNESCO listing. A number of villages in the area have a Ride of the Kings, but the most famous and the only one that happens every year is Vlcnov. I presumed the village would be packed with visitors, much as Cesky Krumlov is for the Festival of the 5-Petalled Rose.
 

What I found was a genuinely local celebration with few tourists. In fact the locals seemed delighted that a Brit and an Australian had come to see their festival. The King is a 10-year old boy, dressed in women's clothing with a paper rose between his teeth, who rides through the village accompanied on either side by two aides in similar attire. In addition there are the riders - young men who recite verses in praise of their King and encouraging by flattery and insult the watchers into donating money. Their horses are decorated with ribbons and over 1000 crepe paper roses.

After the ride there is another procession featuring the women and men of the local villages in traditional folk costumes. Each village has its own costume. In the open-air amphitheatre in the centre of the village we watched local groups perform traditional dances and songs, whilst in one of the houses we met with two ladies who showed us how to make crepe-paper roses and fed us the local cake.

It was a quite extraordinary day and we loved every bit of it. Sadly my camera battery died half way through the day, but that gives me the excuse to go back another year.

A Wedding at Hluboka

Hluboka Castle is one of the Czech Republic's most popular tourist attractions. It is a 19th Century white wedding cake of a castle, the sort of castle Walt Disney would dream up. Inside the then chatelaine, Eleanor Schwarzenberg, spared no expense in decorating the interiors, as she too lived out her dream.

You have to join one of the frequent tours of the castle if you want to look inside and even then the sheer number of visitors may mean that you will not be able to see it as well as you would like. Or you could live out your childhood fantasy and get married in a castle. I came across this oriental couple having their photos taken in the garden, when I visited the other day.

My contact at Castle Stekl, which is part of the complex of castle buildings, tells me that weddings are very popular with their Japanese visitors and other nationalities. It seems strange to me that you would want a Czech civic wedding when you are from the other side of the world and a totally different culture. But the idea of a wedding in a castle is not so strange. My husband and I got married in the chapel of our local castle in England and I can vouch for the experience.

Guess whose exhibition was on at Spilberk Castle

I have to admit that, despite having visited Brno, I hadn't made it to the city's Spilberk Castle. I don't know why; it was always on my to-visit list and it is in the city centre. This month I at last made up the short hill to the formidable building.

Spilberk Castle is home to the city's museum and an art gallery, which features local artists in a permanent exhibition and international artists in a temporary gallery. As I walked into a castle courtyard I encountered a huge blown-up soup can. Yes, Andy Warhol's amazing graphics are on display in the temporary gallery.

The gallery was busy, but as I have observed elsewhere in the Czech Republic not so much that I could not enjoy the artworks fully. I doubt that it would be the same if the exhibition had been on in Britain. I had a rather limited view of Warhol's work based on his most famous works, but this exhibition showed Warhol to be more than just a showman, to be a brilliant artist.

If you want to see a larger permanent exhibition of Warhol's work you can either go to New York or you can go to to the Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce in Eastern Slovakia. When Warhol was asked where he came from, he replied "Nowhere", suggesting that he created himself. He, of course, reinvented himself. He changed his name from Andrej Warhola to the anglicised Andrew Warhol. His parents were Czechoslovakian immigrants from a little village close to Medzilaborce. They were ethnically Ruthenian, an ethnic group related to the Ukrainians from that part of the Carpathians.

Warhol practiced his parents' Orthodox Catholic religion and towards the end of his life started to paint icons. The first artworks he would have seen as a child would have been the icons on the walls of his mother's room. Knowing that suddenly we see Warhol's prints in a different light - in some ways he was always creating icons - of Marilyn Monroe and soup cans. It turns out that Warhol didn't come from nowhere after all.

The strange obsession of Max Appeltauer

As I passed through the wine country south of Znojmo on my way to Vienna, I stopped at the village of Satov. Here I was told by my friends at the Znojmo pension was a treasure: a wine cellar decorated with folk art.

I don't know what I was expecting as I descended into the cool of the cellar. What I found was just magical and rather weird. The whole of the cellar had been decorated by its former owner, Max Appeltauer. Both walls of the main hall and the walls of the rooms that lead off it are covered with naive images of landscapes, country folk, mermaids, and dwarfs.

Every Sunday for thirty-six years Max Appeltauer would descend into the cellar to carve and paint his designs by a candlelight. Nothing could stop the obsessive Mr Appeltauer, not even losing an arm in the Second World War. What his wife and family thought about it, one can only guess.

I assume this picture is of the long-suffering Mrs Appeltauer. I also assume that she didn't make it into the most obscure room, which is adorned with images of naked ladies!

Buttercups and Memories

Early April is a special time for me in the Czech Republic. Winter is losing its grip, warm sunny days are interspersed with cold grey ones. In the woods and fields the first flowers are appearing - the Alpine Snowbell, little cowslips, violets, and these purple buttercups. A few days ago I took a walk to the wooded hill of Ptaci Hradek (Bird Castle) which stands behind Krumlov's castle gardens. The ground was so covered with buttercups that the wood floor was in placed purple.

As I stood admiring the flowers, I was reminded of the first time I saw them on another April. It seems many years ago. I was taken there by my friend, Hannah. I suspect she knew that I would fall in love with the little flowers, as we shared a sense of awe for the little miracles of nature. I remember that as she was dying, Hannah expressed a regret that she would not see Krumlov's spring flowers that year. She died in early April. So as I followed the path we had followed  I enjoyed the flowers and thought of her walking with me through the trees.

Hannah on my first walk among the buttercups.